Tom Pidcock gave another spectacular display of his bike handling skills on the final day of the Volta ao Algarve, but otherwise found his time trial bike to be an awkward beast to tame, and slipped out of the overall lead to finish the week in sixth place.
Pidcock's chances of hanging onto the podium or even the yellow jersey were shrouded in mystery given his lack of experience against the clock.
The Ineos Grenadiers rider was world champion as a junior but juggles so many different disciplines that his time trial bike has been somewhat neglected. As it turned out, the 24.4km rolling course around Lagoa laid that bare as he finished 19th, 1:27 down on stage winner Stefan Küng and 1:11 down on the overall winner, his teammate Dani Martínez.
Latest Videos From
"It was pretty tricky. I couldn't really get the power out in my TT position. It shows I didn't really spend enough time on this bike yet," Pidcock told reporters after crossing the line in Lagoa.
"My heart rate was probably 20 beats less than what I was at yesterday on the final climb, so I couldn't get everything out."
His heart rate might have spiked when he took too much speed into one corner and veered off road, heading up a dirt banking before riding it around and down as if he were on a BMX track.
"I'm just happy I stayed upright," Pidcock joked afterwards.
Pidcock also joked that he wasn't yet aware "how many minutes - or hours - I lost", and the humour was a sign of a rider none too disappointed to have fallen down the general classification on the final day.
He'd described the GC as an "afterthought" at the start of the week and pointed out that racing his time trial bike in anger was an "important step" in his long-term development as a potential Grand Tour contender.
"It was a good experience," he reaffirmed in Lagoa. "Today I think I needed to go through that process."
It was a sentiment echoed by his coach, Kurt Bogaerts, who cut a far more glass-half-full tone.
"With Tom, we didn't do any focus on the TT yet. Today was a starting point for that, a platform to work on," the Belgian told Cyclingnews.
"It's a discipline where you need to put effort in. We had a lot of disciplines in the past but not this. You need to get used to the bike. On his road bike, cyclocross bike, and mountain bike, he gets the power out, and now we need to transform the power he can do on those bikes onto the TT bike.
"We came here to do a TT and we now know where we are - top 20 in this field is a really good result. You have the world champion Tobias Foss, Filippo Ganna, Stefan Küng, all specialists. Tom can take a lot of motivation from this."
