Slumped against the barriers in Valladolid's Paseo de Zorilla boulevard, Tom Pidcock cut an exhausted but plainly delighted figure at the stage finish of the Vuelta a España on Thursday, as the Q36.5 leader celebrated a time trial result that keeps him well in the fight for a top-three place overall.
Pidcock finished 22nd, well out of the top standings in the 12.5-kilometre city centre course. But crucially, he was three seconds and one spot ahead of Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), his archrival in his fight for third in Madrid behind Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG).
The Briton has thus widened his advantage on Hindley to 39 seconds, which is hardly a gap with which he can feel totally comfortable going into Saturday's crunch final summit finish of the Vuelta at the Bola del Mundo. However, his slightly boosted advantage keeps him ahead in the battle for the podium. And at this late stage in the game, that's arguably all that matters.
"I think that was my best-ever time trial, looking at the numbers I was doing," Pidcock told journalists afterwards.
"So I can be pretty happy. We didn't focus it all on the time trialling before this, you know? I wanted to improve my climbing, and I did a team time trial session and a team time trial [on stage 5]. So I felt super strong, to be honest."
Asked if he would even have preferred the time trial to have its full original distance prior to being cut for safety reasons, considering his current form, Pidcock answered with wry humour, "I don't think there were many people out there you could ask who would have wanted to do a longer time trial."
He had also needed to recover mentally, he said, from the impact of not being able to fight for the victory on stage 11, when he broke away with Vingegaard, only to find the finish had been moved to three kilometres from the original line in Bilbao because of protests, and that there would be no winner.
However, now he had bounced back and was still raring to defend his third place overall.
"This week I feel l did in the first part of the race," Pidcock said, "I'm definitely confident but not getting complacent."
Red Bull were not going to give up so easily on getting that third place overall from him, he admitted, particularly with not just Hindley in fourth, but Giulio Pellizzari still in fifth as well.
"Hindsight's a wonderful thing," Pidcock concluded, "but it's the first time I've ever been in a situation where I got, for me, finishing on the podium is bigger than a stage win as much as I'd like to win. But it's difficult to balance it sometimes when getting a stage win in a Grand Tour is a big deal."
For now, it seems, the stage wins will have to wait - but an even more major milestone could well be just around the corner and at the ultra-steep slopes of Bola del Mundo, on Saturday, Pidcock has a chance to secure both aims in one fell swoop.
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