The latest summit finish round of the fight for red in the Vuelta a España ended in a stalemate on Wednesday as neither João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) nor Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) proved able to make a decisive move on the Alto de el Morredero.
"Jonas wasn't looking super, but neither was I," was how Almeida, his face visibly fatigued from the effort of tackling the punishing slopes of the Morredero, summed up the performances of the top two performers in the Vuelta and on a day when he maintained his losses on Vingegaard to just a couple of seconds in an uphill sprint of five.
Briefly as the lead group of favourites rode across mountainsides blackened and scarred by Spain's recent series of devastating forest fires, when Almeida dropped back at six kilometres to go, it felt like the time lost by the Portuguese star could have been much greater.
Instead, Almeida neutralised his losses with a typical diesel-like steadier climbing pace than his rivals, grinding his way back to the group. However, the way Almeida was constantly drifting out the back and then regaining ground was a very different climb to his blazingly relentless ascent of the Angliru, just five days ago.
Almeida will now have to gamble almost everything on Thursday's time trial, where he may be able to turn the tables on Vingegaard, currently still 50 seconds ahead overall. But given Wednesday's performance, it may well be that riding conservatively in the 27.2 kilometres TT to ensure he keeps his podium spot has become his main goal.
"I'm a bit tired, but these days happen," Almeida told reporters. "I'll just have to focus on Thursday's time trial. I'm not disappointed, just a bit tired like everybody else, but it's one day less to Madrid.
"It was quite a steep climb for the first part, really hard, and then the second part was really windy, so it was a tricky climb.
"At the end, we almost all arrived together, it's just some guys have a bit better sprint than the others."
Not for the first time, Almeida was not able to count on any team support on the last climb. But ultimately on a day when his only goal seemed to be to follow wheels and to ride within himself rather than planning an attack, his more than proven ability to maintain a steady climbing rhythm once again was enough to steady a somewhat wobbly ship.
"They were attacking quite hard, and I knew it was not a sustainable pace for them, so I just went at my own pace, and I knew I'd get them back," Almeida said afterwards.
"The climb was quite hard so after a little bit, we were all by ourselves, it [the lack of team support] didn't change much.
"Jonas was not looking super, but neither was I, so I think we were all in the same boat."
Almeida had a brief exchange of words with his fellow passenger Vingegaard at 3.5 kilometres to go, something he dismissed when asked about it with a wry smile and a claim it was "the usual conversation. I was just telling him that the wind was quite strong".
Commenting on blindingly obvious weather conditions when riders are theoretically running on fumes on a very tough climb is perhaps surprising. But during his post-stage interview, Almeida certainly showed he had a good perspective on the bigger picture beyond the race itself in other ways, too.
Somewhat out of the blue, the Portuguese rider praised Spain's emergency services for the work they had done in putting out the huge forest fires of the last few weeks - the effects of which were visible all around the race, and the kind of natural disaster that has alll too often also wreaked havoc in his native Portugal, too.
"There were sometimes tailwinds, crosswinds, headwinds - it was quite nice, actually," Almeida said. "It's just a pity everything up here is so dark from the fires, so also I want to say chapeau to all the fire people for protecting the places and the houses."
Back in the world of bike racing, meanwhile, in terms of the Vuelta GC, the Morredero threw up more questions than providing answers, given the curiously muted performance by both of the top stars of the GC on the race's second last summit finish.
So unusually for a race which prides itself on its mammoth diet of climbing, it's the flat roads of Valladolid's time trial and not the mountains which look set to provide a more definitive shape to this year's final battle for the maillot rojo. And after Wednesday's low-key performance, though, quite how Almeida - or Vingegaard - will handle the TT remains anyone's guess.
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