Ben Turner was left wondering what if at the finish of stage 4 at the Giro d'Italia, having sprinted to fourth from the reduced group in Cosenza after Netcompany Ineos' GC priorities meant he had to use some of his power to help Egan Bernal.
The former Tour de France and Giro winner was dropped surprisingly with 44.6km to go on the single categorised climb of the day, the only real overall contender to do so, after Movistar decided to light the race up on the Cozzo Tunno.
With only GC co-leader Thymen Arensman and Turner left in the group, the duty of bringing the Colombian champion back to the group of favourites fell to the Brit, who duly accepted and managed to pilot Bernal back across the 30-second deficit in time before the finish.
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But once the reduced sprint for the stage win opened up, Turner was unable to match the likes of eventual winner Jhonatan Narváez (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), having spent his bullets in the 40km prior. Left slightly ejected as he caught his breath back at a fence past the finish, he couldn't hold in his frustration.
"It feels like a big disappointment to be fair, but – well, I don't know, I had good legs. It was good to look after Egan, and I'm really happy he didn't lose time," said Turner.
"Personally, I had good legs, so that was nice. I was climbing with some really good guys, and there were not many left. It was nice to have that feeling again, so it was good to know the shape is there at least."
Pressed to wonder what could've been had he not had to protect Bernal's GC, he knew the fight for the win could've been much closer. He already has a stage win from the Vuelta, after developing into a versatile sprinter, but he was not able to show it off on Tuesday; the team's GC focus came first.
"For sure, I had a lot of legs today. I think it would've been maybe a different result in the end otherwise, but look, we're here to do a team job, we have priorities," he said.
"I'm really proud of the performance we did as a team, and I think we're riding really well as a group, so I'm looking forward to the rest of the days."
Veteran Australian Jack Haig also confirmed at the finish that this had been the plan all along for Ineos, knowing that Bernal and co-leader Arensman could both come under pressure on the 14km climb.
"For us personally, it was more about just trying to get through the day with GC as a priority to begin with, and then as an added bonus, we'd end up with Ben or Filippo [Ganna there in the finish, and we could try and go for the stage win with them," Haig told reporters.
"Obviously, Pippo was struggling a bit on the climb. I was with him, and we did our best to try to come back to the group, but we had Ben there, and he managed to do an OK result at the finish. He showed some really good form heading into the rest of the Giro."
Haig and Turner had slightly different words on what getting dropped this early on means for Bernal, with the former speaking of the reality of his disrupted run-in, and the latter saying it's "not a big stress."
"We also need to realise that he hasn't had a whole load of racing coming into this Giro, and had a bit of a setback there with a small niggle in his knee," said Haig.
"He probably doesn't have the best legs at the moment, we can see that right now, but hopefully with that deduction in load coming into the Giro, he can build into it, and we should get the first sort of tell on Blockhaus."
"I think after the rest day and easy stages, it's quite a normal thing to be quite blocked because it was really explosive climbing," added Turner. "So I think it's not a big stress. He's for sure got the level, that's clear, and that doesn't change anything for us. Still a lot of confidence in him."
What's clear is that the anticipation for Blockhaus on stage 7 will be high, and if Bernal has similar legs to today, there will be nowhere to hide for the 2021 Giro champion. He now sits fourth on GC after Turner put out today's potential fire, but Arensman is looking stronger in fifth overall, with the Dutchman likely to end up as their sole leader if Bernal has another day like this.
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