Elisa Longo Borghini could barely believe what she'd just done. Positive for COVID-19 for the first two weeks in March, then recovering for the other two, she turned up to the Tour of Flanders with no expectations and ended up on the podium.
"I would never, ever expect this," the Italian said at the finish in Oudenaarde. "It's really emotional."
Longo Borghini was forced to miss her home Spring Classics, Strade Bianche and Trofeo Alfredo Binda, after falling ill and being diagnosed with COVID-19 at the start of March. She said she didn't test negative until 15 days later, and then spent the next couple of weeks riding "without any intensity". As such, she'd considered her cobbled Classics campaign a write-off.
However, after a flicker of hope with 11th place at Dwars door Vlaanderen mid-week, Longo Borghini roared back at Flanders, placing second in the group sprint behind the solo winner Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) to clinch the final spot on the podium.
"I want to thank everyone in the team for all the trust they put in me, especially knowing I came from such a strange period, which was very difficult for me," Longo Borghini said.
"At the end, I was just believing that if the others were believing in me then I could get on the podium."
Asked at what point she started to sense she might actually be on a rather good day, Longo Borghini insisted: "I felt really bad all day long."
Up until the closing kilometres, she had spent her day working for her younger teammate, Shirin van Anrooij, but suddenly she found herself in the chase group on the run-in to Oudenaarde.
"When the main splits after the Koppenberg happened I said to Shirin that she was the leader, then I put a big effort to try and get the breakaway back, then all of sudden we regrouped in the last 10 kilometres," Longo Borghini explained, adding that she soon got a message from the team car.
"Ina Teutenberg said to me 'OK now Longo Borghini you have to sprint'. I'm like, OK... I wasted myself a little bit, but I do believe that if she's telling me I have to sprint, that I have all the belief of the teams and I need to finish off this work as best I can.
"Shirin really did a good job keeping the pace up and putting me in the best position for the sprint. I just went and dreamed for 150 metres for a podium place. And so it has happened."
Longo Borghini doesn't have all that much sprinting pedigree, but she has clearly been sharpening up, thanks in part to some training sessions with her partner, Jacopo Mosca, also a Trek-Segafredo rider.
"It feels really weird to have teammates looking to me for the sprint," she said. "Sprinting for town signs with Jacopo paid off somehow."
With Paris-Roubaix less than a week away, Longo Borghini, the defending champion, refused to get carried away by this unexpected turn of form, instead vowing to enjoy this moment before revising her expectations for Saturday.
However, she did issue something of a rallying cry in the face of another dose of SD Worx dominance. The Dutch team have dominated the Spring and at times the other teams have looked listless, but Longo Borghini is at least showing some fight.
"At some point, you just don't have to always think about these SD Worx that are around - otherwise you just lose the race," she said passionately.
"I've been watching a lot of television lately and it seems like every time they are in front the entire peloton is like 'ok, SD Worx is in front so they have won the race'. I'm like 'NO!'
"We have to do our race, we don't have to give a heck if they are back there in the second peloton [blocking]; we do our race, we stick to our plan, we try to get back the first ones and we try to win the race.
"Trek-Segafredo has has a lot of potential and we can win bike races," she concluded.
