Ben O'Connor came through his first day as Vuelta a España leader with the red jersey safely on his shoulders despite Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe making it abundantly clear that they would stop at nothing to try and make the Australian lose his top spot overall.
Most race observers expected that Primož Roglič would reserve his troops for the two upcoming battles in the mountains of southern Spain, with stage 9 through the foothills of Sierra Nevada by far the most dangerous challenge of the Vuelta's first week.
But rather than wait for the weekend, Roglič and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe set down a searing pace on the one classified climb of stage 7, the long but not exceptionally difficult category 2 ascent of Alto del 14%.
O'Connor was able to handle the pace, though, all the way to the summit and on the technical descent back to Cordoba in the front group of some 20 riders in an impressively initial tenacious defence of the jersey he has just captured.
The terrain was hardly relevant. The Australian explained afterwards, he's absolutely determined to fight tooth and nail for the first Grand Tour lead of his career, and very aware, too, that from seemingly inoffensive category 2 climbs to much harder mountain stages, Red Bull and the rest of his GC rivals will take every chance they can to test him.
"It's obvious, anyone would do it, you never throw it away, it's all in for the red jersey until it comes off my shoulders - maybe it won't," O'Connor stated defiantly.
"But I enjoyed today, it was a good day out, I think the boys [teammates] enjoyed it, seeing me leading the race so I'm proud of how it all went down."
But if O'Connor is full-on focussed on fighting for the lead, to judge by stage 7 at least, Red Bull are clearly equally full-on focussed on regaining it. The German squad drove so hard on the Alto del 14% that their plan 'B' for the GC, Florian Lipowitz, cracked near the summit and fell back, losing the lead in the Best Young Rider's classification. But it seemingly didn't matter as much as them giving O'Connor as hard a time as they could.
"They did give it a bit of a crack," O'Connor said, "I don't know if Primoz knew exactly where the [bonus] sprint was, whether it was right at the top of the steep bit or - I don't know. Or maybe Primoz wanted to see how I coped with the heat because I did struggle on stage 4 - I had an average day, I would say."
"BI actually felt great today, I really enjoyed it. But I guess they have to try and it's not going to be the last time we see them working like that to see if they can drop me."
The next step for O'Connor in his Vuelta a España defence will come with a tough summit finish at Cazorla on stage 8. Although it has some sections at 20 percent like Pico Villuercas on stage 4, it is much shorter and O'Connor commented that "Saturday is a completely different finish climb. It's way less steep overall, you don't have such a long run-in."
"I literally have no idea if it's going to be as hot as on Tuesday, but I'll try to finish at the front and not lose any time, simple as that."
Globally, O'Connor said, there was the question of how the team defended the jersey "and if today was simple, tomorrow" -with much harder terrain "will be a little more complicated."
"Breakaway establishment is probably the hardest thing to learn and figure out, but we're all professionals, we've done plenty of races, and it's my eighth pro season so I have some experience and know what can and should be done."
"For sure we're not Jumbo or Bora who have had multiple leader's jerseys but you know what to do. It [defending a race lead] is not always the most complicated thing in the world."
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