Current third in the Tour de France overall standings, Spain's Carlos Rodríguez showed no sign of wilting under the pressure on Monday's rest day as the Ineos Grenadiers pro promised that he had no plans of sitting on his laurels.
"If I have good legs, I'll attack," the Spaniard commented on the Tour's second rest day.
Rodríguez is running well behind the two top favourites for yellow in Paris 5:21 behind race leader Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates. With fourth-placed Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates), just 19 seconds in fourth and fifth-placed Jai Hindley (Bora-Hansgrohe) steadily shipping time because of injuries, a superficial glance at the results sheet suggests that Yates is his main rival for the podium.
The situation is not straightforward, however. Yates and UAE are still working hard for the overall victory with Tadej Pogačar, which likely limits Yates' options to fight for third in Paris, at least while Pogačar remains with a chance of winning.
Rodríguez and Ineos Grenadiers, on the other hand, have his GC standing as their almost exclusive goal in the Tour's final week. Rather pay too much attention to the debate around Yates and the overall, the Spaniard seemed set on riding his own race for now.
"For now, I'm fine. I've noticed I'm a bit tired because of all the hard racing there's been over the last few days. But I hope to recover today and get my strength up for what's left to come," Rodríguez observed.
"I'm doing the best I can, and I hope to go on like that, stay focused and keep my head on the ground.
"From here in the race, I'm not really aware of the impact this is having on the media back home. I just noticed it from the media here.
"In the race I'm suffering a lot, but you try to remain aware of where you're at. You see the public cheering you on and you try to enjoy every moment."
In the similarly hilly, albeit different in terms of the overall profile, 31-kilometre Critérium du Dauphiné time trial, Rodríguez finished 25th, losing just over a minute to Adam Yates, who finished eighth at 57 seconds.
"That could be a reference point to know how to gauge my effort," Rodríguez said. "I did check out the time trial here after the Dauphiné. It's very hard. I don't know if it'll be good or bad for me, hopefully the former."
With a category 2 uphill finish rather than the grinding false flat which concluded the Dauphiné TT, Rodriguez said "it is not the same at all as the Dauphiné. We know the kind of pace I can set, but it'll be my legs that really decide. In principle, I won't change my bike mid-course."
At the moment, Rodríguez is sitting in third place overall, which would be Spain's first Tour de France podium since Alejandro Valverde finished in the same position in 2015. However, while that had all the feel of a high-water mark for the Spanish veteran, at 22, Rodríguez result puts him in a very different place.
His main rivals to stop him from becoming Spain's first Tour podium finisher, he said, "are impossible to identify. You never know. It seemed like Hindley's third place was set in stone and now he's running fifth. By Tuesday evening I could be running tenth overall.
"I'll try to keep on producing the best version of myself and I'll fight with whoever's next to me on the GC.
"I'm learning things every day. When I finish this race and I'm looking back, I'll see what I've done well and what I could have done better and I'll learn from that. But I don't feel any pressure." Rodríguez said he was using his experiences in the 2022 Vuelta, both positive and negative, to gain perspective on how he viewed the Tour.
"After I fell badly in the Vuelta last year, I felt very different, like I wasn't myself. It took me a long while to recover from the injuries and I was 'out of it' in the third week. I've learned not to push myself."
As for what's coming up, Rodríguez argued that the mountain stage which suits him the best will be Courchevel on Wednesday. "The climb comes directly after the Col de la Loze, which is very long and hard, it could be a key moment. If I have good legs, I'll attack."
Rodríguez already had a brief dig on Sunday, but he described it as "a semi-attack. I got a bit of distance after a roundabout and opted to keep going. I always like to be offensive. But with two riders and teams that are so strong ahead of me on GC, it's hard to make an impact without shooting yourself in the foot."
