Tom Pidcock was set to test his climbing legs on stage 4 of the Volta a Catalunya but even though the big summit finish at Vallter 2000 was scrapped from the route the Briton played an active role throughout the day.
The Pinarello Q36.5 rider picked up bonus seconds 18km into the stage, then 18km from the finish, and on the finish line itself, as he even mixed it in the bunch sprint and came away with third place on stage 4.
As a result, he leapfrogged one of the big pre-race favourites, Remco Evenepoel (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) into second place overall behind race leader and sprinter Dorian Godon, who will fall away when the mountains do finally start.
Pidcock was beaten by Evenepoel to the day's first intermediate sprint, which carried bonuses of 3, 2, and 1 seconds for the first three across the line. However, he charged clear of a splitting peloton to take the full three seconds at the final intermediate sprint, before helping himself to four more thanks to his third-place finish.
It was a total haul of nine seconds, to Evenepoel's three, which sees him rise from third to second place at the expense of the Belgian by a single second, with fellow contender Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) a further 10 seconds back.
"I feel better today," said Pidcock on Eurosport, in the context of his ongoing recovery from Saturday's Milan-San Remo podium. "But today doesn't matter really does it?
"A few bonus seconds... I don't think that's going to make too much difference in this race."
Still, there was enough of an incentive to go after them in the first place, suggesting Pidcock had higher hopes than simply recovering and training during this race, which will belatedly hit the mountains on the next two days.
He was not, however, drawn into a speculative GC raid when Evenepoel's teammate Florian Lipowitz and French climber Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) jumped across to him following the second intermediate sprint, declining the invitation to push on.
As for the finish, a bunch sprint was not Pidcock's usual fare but yet again it was not a traditional flat-track finish. Pidcock was well positioned on the short kicker that preceded the technical final few hundred metres, bagging the wheel of double stage winner Godon and riding it through to third place.
"To be honest, I probably should have done more research on VeloViewer of how the final was, because it came so fast after that climb," Pidcock said. "But nah, that's alright, third, that's good – these guys are fast, I'm not that fast. It's good.
"It was a massive headwind down the big road. The guys did a good job keeping me up there," he added. "With 3k to go I went back a bit because it's quite hard when you're nearer the front, then i just committed up the climb, got on Godon's wheel and yeah... it's alright."
