Tom Pidcock (Q36.5) lost more time to his fellow podium-chasing rivals on stage 14 of the Vuelta a España, but he, for the second day running, showed the resilience to hold onto third overall up to La Farrapona and keep his GC dream alive.
He finished eighth atop the Asturian summit, with fourth-place overall Jai Hindley (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) attacking in the final kilometre to try and reduce what started as a 42-second deficit to Pidcock on Saturday morning.
Red Bull's Giulio Pellizzari did most of the damage to Pidcock within 3km from the finish, putting in a stunning lead-out for the former Giro d'Italia winner, after Hindley's team had contributed to pulling on the front on the approach and lower slopes of the final climb.
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Hindley then surged away with the top two on GC – Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) – in the final kilometre, but lacked the sprint to gain bonus seconds on the line and finished fourth, 43 seconds down on solo winner Marc Soler (UAE).
Pidcock fought his bike to cross the line a further 10 seconds back, as part of a group of four. He's now just 32 seconds in front of the Australian, but is approaching the end of the second week with only a 167km medium mountain stage in Galicia left to tackle on Sunday.
"It was still pretty hard though, obviously, UAE and Bora wanted it to be a hard day and make it a long effort in this final climb, which it kind of was," said Pidcock to Eurosport at the summit.
"Luckily, it was a bit up and down at the start, so not too bad. This headwind made it hard, in the fact that you had to ride as close as you could to the edge, but that also meant it was just the final kilometre that made the difference."
After successfully defending the podium spot he earned thanks to the punchy stages in the first half of the Vuelta, Pidcock was by no means disheartened by the narrow time loss.
He also noted how the longer climbs that we've seen taken on in the past two Asturian stages have highlighted a marked development in his GC abilities and longer climbing efforts this past season.
"I lost a bit more time, but I think I'm getting better and better at these longer efforts," added Pidcock.
"This are definitely the thing that I struggle with the most – well, not struggle with the most, everyone struggles because it's hard – but the thing I can improve the most in, and this year I have improved massively, but obviously there's still a lot more."
Angliru was a big test, which he limited the damage on, and today his time loss was even narrower, but a second wind may be necessary to hold off the ever-improving Hindley.
If he can get through tomorrow's stage from A Veiga/Vegadeo to Monforte de Lemos – which looks like a certain breakaway day, but will be difficult with a 16-kilometre, category 1 climb welcoming the peloton straight from kilometre 0 – without losing any more time, then he can look to recover and head into the third week confident that a top five, or even podium finish is possible.
"Well, we'll see about it," said Pidcock with a smile, when asked if he could look forward to an 'Easier' stage on Sunday. "I don't know, maybe it'll be a day off for us, but it's not going to be easy."
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