Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain-Victorious) felt the full brunt of Isaac del Toro's power on the penultimate day of the UAE Tour, and despite ceding control of the race lead on the slopes up to Jebel Hafeet, he could only look back on his week of racing as a big positive.
Del Toro launched two moves in the final 5km of racing, the first was long and dropped everyone except Tiberi in the red jersey, but the second was killer, leaving the Italian in his wake as he went on to win the stage and move into the lead with one sprint stage to go.
But on a rapid day without any complications prior to the pure man-on-man climbing battle, the overwhelming emotion for Tiberi at the finish was one of pride.
"For all the team and me, of course, it would have been better to keep this jersey and the leadership, but I gave it all my best," Tiberi told Cyclingnews. "Del Toro pushed me to the limit even more to try to defend this jersey, and I can just be proud and happy because I gave all the energy I had in my body until the finish line.
"I can not do more than this, so congrats to Del Toro that he did a really, really strong effort, and he's one of the strongest riders in the world right now, so I can just be happy."
His team recognised, too, how there was little Tiberi could try except for following Del Toro's violent bursts, also noting how this week would be one to look back on positively, with the Italian netting the first WorldTour win of his career on the hardest stage to Jebel Mobrah.
"He didn't really have a choice, I don't think, but to follow Del Toro. But I think the main thing was it was just man on man, wasn't it? So you can't really change anything," Rod Ellingworth, Bahrain's performance director, told Cyclingnews.
"If anything happened beforehand which sort of altered the result, then you can be more disappointed, but I think certainly Damiano Caruso said before the day that 'We don't have any regrets, and we will give it 100%' and the boys did, so it's disappointing, of course, but I think the guys gave it everything.
"There won't be anybody more disappointed than him, and he really wanted to win that, and I don't think he was too far wrong, you know. He'll look at that, I'm sure, and he'll grow with it."
Even just minutes after the defeat, though, Tiberi was able to look at the strong performance he'd put in across the whole week, with a safe finish on the final sprint stage in Abu Dhabi set to land him a runner-up finish at a WorldTour race, and a narrow defeat only at the hands of one of the fastest rising stars in the sport.
"For sure, I look more to the positive things, because I've never started a season like this," Tiberi said. "now, I've already won a race – the last time was in the Tour of Hungary [in May] – and it's here in February, at the UAE Tour, a WorldTour to race, so I'm super, super happy about the feelings."
"I think Antonio has done really well to get where he is and to be on the form he's on. We've put up a good fight, and although yes, we're disappointed, we've got to be happy as well," added Ellingworth. "So there's nothing more you can say, really, I think everybody knows UAE is strong, and you've just got to try and think of different ways of being them."
