Intermediate sprints rarely cause more than the briefest ripples of interest in stage races. But in the Volta a Catalunya on Friday, GC contender Juan Ayuso snatched a third place at one such sprint and the local TV commentators were all but jumping out of their seats at the Spanish rider's achievement.
The reason was clear: Ayuso's one second time bonus gain from the sprint was enough to put the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider back into the overall lead ahead of arch-rival Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe). Ayuso had previously been tied on time with Roglič, but the Slovenian's worse stage placings had pushed him down to second on GC.
Now the boot was on the other foot, thanks to Ayuso's one-second time gain at the sprint in the town of L'Aldea, and after both Ayuso and Roglič had made it into the lead echelon that formed late on the windblasted stage 5.
"The perfect scenario would have been if Roglič was behind [in a second echelon], but with such a good and strong rider like him, that's always hard," Ayuso confirmed later.
"In any case, I'm happy to be on the front, I arrived safely and I got the bonus second. It's only one second but we don't know if it can be important or not, the deciding second. So it's better to have it than not."
Regaining command of the GC lead by such a trivial amount might seem irrelevant, Ayuso admitted. But Catalunya's overall battle has been decided by minimal time margins in the past, so it was better to have that advantage.
"In any other race, one second would be nearly pointless or something to not lose too much energy on," Ayuso agreed. "But in this race we have seen many times that it can be decided by one second or even positions like the GC was decided, right up until this morning.
"So we have to fight for every second, and now if we arrive together, I have that in my favour. Every second counts."
Ayuso had not wanted to talk to the media after losing narrowly to Roglič on stage 4's ascent to Montserrat. Then 24 hours later, in a much more communicative mood with the leader's jersey on his back, he explained that he felt he had failed to live up to the team on stage 4 after they had worked so hard on the climb to try and blow the race apart, so he had been too disappointed to talk.
"The team worked really well, they deserved the win and when you lose by such a close margin, it always hurts a bit," Ayuso said. "It's true, though, that the other day I won by even less of a margin, so sometimes you have it, some days you don't."
Just 24 hours after the summit finish at Montserrat, stage 5 was a very different kind of scenario, Ayuso agreed, with an echelon and small bunch sprint finish deciding the day's outcome. But if echelons can sometimes take a peloton by surprise, on Friday with gale-force winds battering the race from the word go, they were anything but unexpected.
The proof was that only a handful of top GC riders, amongst them Lennert van Eetvelt (Lotto) and Juanpe López (Lidl-Trek) were caught out when the echelon finally formed, losing around 40 seconds.
"The stage was very nervous, it was very tense from the start with the winds, we knew that would be an echelon. The only thing we did not know was where, whether it would be 100 kilometres from the finish or close to the end like it finally proved to be."
On Saturday the Volta heads back into the mountains, where Ayuso and the rest of the field are expecting a major battle on GC.
"It's the toughest climbs of the race, and that's more where it can break open and cause a selection. So I want to recover and be ready for that," Ayuso said. "Probably the GC won't be decided by one second. But if it is - then now I have it."
