Time and again during the fraught finale of stage 4 of the Ruta del Sol, the blue clad figure of Simon Yates (Bike Exchange-Jayco) could be seen in the thick of the action in a performance which may have brought few rewards on the day, but which bodes well for the future.
One of 15 riders who managed to shed the former yellow jersey Alessandro Covi (UAE Team Emirates) on the early brace of first category climbs, Yates was constantly on the move on the relentlessly lumpy terrain that followed.
The Briton led the charge that brought back one dangerous attack by Ben O'Connor (AG2R Citroën), Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan) and Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious), tried a couple of moves on his own and chased hard to bring back the winning breakaway of Lutsenko and Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious).
The sole Team Bike Exchange-Jayco racer in the break, Yates finally finished the stage in seventh and remains in seventh overall, 21 seconds down on new leader Poels.
But as he told a small group of reporters afterwards, "I'll always give it a crack," despite being out-numbered in the break with Astana Qazaqstan, Ineos Grenadiers and Bahrain Victorious all having multiple riders.
"They had a lot of numbers, and there wasn't a lot of co-operation there," Yates said. "But each to his own and I did the best I could.
"Hopefully we can improve a bit better by tomorrow. Right now, we've got to think about recovery because it was a hard day"
Asked if he had been chasing to limit the losses on GC contender Poels or to go for the stage, Yates answered "a bit of both."
And as the winner of the Ruta's toughest stage in 2019, it could well be that Yates is back in the action on Sunday's summit finish, by far the most difficult day of the 2022 race.
However, he was cautious about his chances of making a GC challenge, saying "I need to have a proper look at the overall tonight and then we'll go from there."
"You saw the numbers they [Bahrain] had there in the front group, a lot of us were on our own there. So if they're strong again tomorrow they'll be hard to beat. But I'll always give it a crack."
