When Wout Poels was asked if he had talked to fellow Ruta del Sol stage 4 breakaway rider Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan) about reaching a unofficial agreement so that the Kazakhstani would get the stage win and Poels the lead, his answer came back as a categorical 'No'. This time, it turned out, Poels wanted it all.
After the race blew apart on stage 4 hilly start, the Bahrain Victorious rider and Lutsenko sheared away from the leading breakaway of 15 riders, and the duo quickly opening up enough of a gap to be all but sure of duelling for the stage win.
As Poels explained to a small group of reporters at the finish – after a three-year drought on victories since he took a win with Ineos Grenadiers in the 2019 Dauphiné – this time round he wanted to go for the stage win.
"If I knew tomorrow was flat, and I would win the GC, then maybe I would have done that," Poels, who leads the race by ten seconds over Astana's MIguel Angel López, said afterwards.
"But the thing is I haven't had so many victories in the last few years, and every opportunity you get in racing you just have to take."
The runner-up in the 2019 Ruta del Sol, Poels' stage win in the five-day stage race is the second after his summit victory in La Guardia de Jaén back in 2018.
But this time around, the circumstances were very different with Poels having to gauge his strength after a ferociously fast four hours of racing over 3,000 metres of climbing, run off at an average speed of over 42kph.
"The conditions were not ideal because we had a headwind, so it was a little bit of a gamble," Poels, who led out the sprint and managed to fend off Lutsenko's counter-charge, said.
"But I thought 'go for it' and just see what happens. I've never sprinted against Lutsenko before but I know he's pretty quick and he's already won a race this year" – on Monday in the Clásica de Jaén, just a few hours bike ride north of Saturday's finish in eastern Andalucia.
"So I knew I was going to have to be very good to be able to beat him," Poels related. "But I'm very happy, because it's been a long time since I won, and also I've got the leader's jersey. So we'll see."
Poels, riding his first race of the year, said that his winter worked out very well, with the experiment of doing a first pre-season training camp at altitude in the Canary Islands clearly bringing benefits.
"I trained really hard – everyone does of course – but it's nice that straight away it pays off a little bit," he said. "I feel a little bit more relaxed now. I'm a happy man."
Haig said he was on the Teide with a group of half a dozen Bahrain Victorious team-mates including Jack Haig, Gino Mäder and Sonny Colbrelli, but his idea of training at altitude so early in the season is "to try and fit in a second one before the Giro d'Italia."
"I'll be there to support [teammate Mikel] Landa, but I'll have my own opportunities as well," he said.
And on Saturday in Baza, Poels proved that when chances come his way, he knows how to make the most of them.
