Ineos Grenadiers management paid tribute to their Tour de France debutant Carlos Rodríguez for coming through the Alps with his options for a top-five finish in Paris intact despite his inexperience.
Currently in fourth place overall, Rodríguez had a quiet day on Thursday's stage, won by Kasper Asgreen (Soudal-QuickStep). He crossed the line in 39th place and is now looking ahead towards the final mountain stage of this year's Tour de France on Saturday, stage 20 in the Vosges.
On the stage to Courchevel, the 22-year-old lost just over a minute to Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) but hung onto his GC position. As a result, Rodríguez remains the 'filling' for a Yates 'sandwich', 1:16 down on Adam, currently running third, and 18 seconds ahead of Yates' twin brother Simon in fifth. And at 22, he is also very much the GC 'discovery' of the 2023 Tour de France.
Although Ineos Grenadiers are playing a day-by-day strategy with Rodriguez as this is his first Tour. The yellow jersey is sitting quite firmly on the shoulders of Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) but the team's lead sports director Steve Cummings says he is still expecting some major fireworks in the Vosges.
"Saturday is going to be huge," Cummings told Cyclingnews at the start of stage 18. "It could be a real tactical battle. Rather than a stage like Liège-Bastogne-Liège, it's perhaps got a profile that's more similar to the last day in Paris-Nice and we all know what happens there every year.
"So it could be the same. I suspect it will blow apart."
Rodríguez has already shown he is not afraid of taking on the big names in the mountains after he took a fine stage win at Morzine in the Alps by breaking away from Vingegaard and arch-rival Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and staying ahead on the perilous descent of the Col du Joux Plane.
Cummings says rather than put Rodríguez under any kind of pressure to try and go for the third spot on the podium, which he already held briefly after Morzine, it was more a question of seeing what was possible. Come what may, he can count on the full backing of the team.
"It's more a question of giving it time, seeing if he can recover a bit before Saturday. He's doing his maximum, but we still don't know what his upper limit is, so let's see. It's his first Grand Tour and he's learned a lot and hasn't made many mistakes."
Cummings praised the Spaniard for his gutsy performance on the Col de la Loze, saying "It was really good, he did everything he could in a really difficult situation.
"Vingegaard and Pogačar being a step ahead of the rest, the responsibility has often fallen on us to try and control things in the battle for the podium and we did that again."
"We were considering putting someone in front for the Cornet de Roseland" - the category 1 climb that preceded the Col de la Loze. "Kwiato' [Michal Kwiatkowski, stage 13 winner] could have gone if he'd wanted to and if we still had eight riders here ideally we'd have done that.
"But Carlos wasn't feeling super and we had to make a quick decision and decided that rather than put somebody up front, we were better off staying together."
As for the Col de Loze, rather than respond to all the accelerations in the yellow jersey group, Rodríguez simply rode within himself, even if that meant he was finally dropped on the climb.
"He did his own thing, kept his pace, because on a climb as horrible as that one, with the ramps and flatter sections and more ramps and flatter sections, it's very hard to find your rhythm," Cummings explained. "You can get a lot of speed if you're on a good day on a climb like that, but if you're not having the best day, it's easy to lose it."
The Vosges mountains will offer a final test of climbing strength for Rodriguez and the other GC contenders. And after punching above his weight so convincingly to date, the Spaniard will be one to watch for sure.
