You'd have needed a heart of stone not to be moved by David Gaudu's (Groupama-FDJ) look of sheer delight as he celebrated his stage win in the Vuelta a España on Sunday, and a much-needed return to top form following a miserable first part of the year.
Ever since he crashed in training this March, the 28-year-old Frenchman has been fighting fires throughout much of 2025. His Giro d'Italia participation left him empty handed, injured and exhausted, and he subsequently missed out on the Tour de France, his big goal of the season, with poor form.
Even in the lowkey Tour de L'Ain, his one warm-up pre-Vuelta race failed to bode well, with 39th place.
But as happened to Gaudu both in 2020 when he was a DNF in the Tour de France, but then took two Vuelta stages, and again in 2024 when he failed to shine in his home Grand Tour but then finished sixth in Spain, the Vuelta looks set to be his salvation once more.
Third place at category 2's Limone Piemonte was already an impressive start. But to then out-power both lead favourite Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) on stage 3 represented an even more notable success story.
"It's been a very difficult year," Gaudu recognised afterwards. "I haven't won in the WorldTour in a long time. The last time was in the 2022 Dauphiné, when I beat [Wout] Van Aert in the sprint, and now I've done it against Pedersen. I'm feeling a lot of emotions."
The sense of redemption was perhaps all the higher given Groupama-FDJ's loss of Guillaume Martin the day before, with Gaudu's co-leader crashing out and breaking two vertebrae on a descent.
However, while lamenting the loss of his teammate, Gaudu was already feeling very motivated after his third place in Limone - "things are moving again," he told L'Équipe afterwards. The confirmation then came through just 24 hours later.
"Since the start of the year, I've had a lot of setbacks," he said. "Crashes, other issues that were sometimes my fault, sometimes not, but the team has always known how to put me back on the rails.
"It's a great reward to be able to give them this victory. I had good feelings, and I knew the level I could get to, but I just couldn't show it. Yesterday [Sunday] was already a success, and now I've done so again. Whatever happens from hereon, we can call our Vuelta a triumph."
Gaudu's bike-handling skills, throwing himself into the last corner to emerge ahead of his two Danish rivals, proved crucial and his manoeuvre drew a kind of grudging admiration from Vingegaard, saying "he sort of dive-bombed us, but he did a very good job".
"I was trying to find good timing with about two kilometres to go," Gaudu said. "We had done the recon, and I liked what I saw, but I was up against Pedersen! I saw in the last corner that he didn't close the door on me, he was maybe on the limit, but in any case I managed to get through.
"If you had told me that in three days we'd have got a victory and a top placing, even without the red jersey, I'd have signed for that."
Despite some notable top 10 finishes overall in the Vuelta in both 2024 and 2020, Gaudu was more reserved about his GC options long-term, suggesting that it would be better to look at it once the team had crossed the hurdle of the upcoming team time trial.
He was equally guarded whether he will now try and go for the red jersey on Tuesday's stage across the border from Italya and through to Voiron, although there can be no doubt that leading the Vuelta on home soil has multiple attractions.
"We will just see what we can do, " he reflected, "there is a very hard start to the stage and for now I just want to be happy with the win. Tomorrow is another day."
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