Desperately trying to hold onto the green jersey, Michael Storer looked like a man on a mission for most of the final part of Thursday's Tour of the Alps stage. With the threatening Thymen Arensman a long way up the road and in the virtual lead, Storer took things into his own hands, launching a solo assault to try to cling onto the jersey, and he looked completely determined.
At the finish, however, the Australian was more like a man destroyed. On the road, he'd managed to cut the four-minute gap to Arensman to under a minute – the margin he needed to keep his race lead – but on the final climb up to Obertilliach, the cost of Storer's efforts showed, and Arensman pulled back the few seconds he needed.
In the end, it was agonisingly close, with Storer finishing 1:23 down on the Dutchman who had started the day with a 1:18 deficit. With the time bonuses, Storer now trails Arensman by 11 seconds with one stage to go.
Pulling up just after the finish, an exhausted Storer collapsed onto the wet grass, not putting a second thought to getting even damper and colder than he already was, his fatigue the only feeling he needed to address. He even needed help removing his helmet, and sat with his head in his hands, defeated.
To be beaten convincingly is one thing, but to put in a ride as big as Storer did with such a huge dose of determination and strength and still lose the thing you were fighting for is a different kind of disappointment.
As he sat on the floor trying to catch his breath, the Australian was mobbed by TV cameras and journalists, all ready to ask him what had happened, what went wrong, and how he felt.
Predictably, Storer declined to speak at all at the finish, perhaps because he was just so drained, or perhaps there was just nothing to say. He tried, he gave everything, it didn't work. He didn't really need to talk to make clear how he felt, the disappointment was palpable.
Whilst Storer may be defeated today, however, there is still a stage of the Tour of the Alps left, and his team was clear that they intended to take the fight to the very end.
"First we need to pass the night and recover," Storer's DS, Claudio Cozzi said at the finish, speaking to Daniel Benson's Cycling Substack.
"It was very cold today. We spent a lot of energy today but we're still in the game. We need to fight until the last finish line."
Tudor are still in the game, but there are questions over how they managed to come so close to being out of it. Letting Arensman get away was one thing, but the way his gap quickly ballooned out to four minutes before Storer responded.
"It wasn't simple in the moment of the Aresman attack because there were a lot of moves," Cozzi explained. "It wasn't possible to close it because if we had chased him, we would have been attacked again."
It was Lidl-Trek who had been making things hard early on and whittling down the GC group – specifically whittling down Storer's support team – and that was what Arensman launched off, but it led to a complicated situation for Tudor. They had few resources to pull, but the teams that did also weren't keen to pull things back in his favour.
Instead, all that was left was for Storer to try and go it alone.
"When Arensman had gone I asked Michael to stay calm, eat and drink and then we'd go full gas on the last climbs and we'd see what happened," Cozzi said.
And what happened was that it almost worked. Storer was clearly stronger than his GC rivals, even those with teammates around them, and Tudor very nearly got the result they wanted. It was only the very final bit of climbing that undid their ambitions, but it wasn't for a lack of strength.
With a day to go, Storer's status as likely the strongest rider in the race could still pay dividends as the peloton takes on a shorter, punchier stage around Lienz on Friday. He may have been defeated on stage 4, but Storer's rivals are not looking at him as a rider who is done at this race, far from it.
"I think Michael's in the shape of his life and it's going to be really hard to keep him behind," was Thymen Arensman's assessment of the rider who sits in second place behind him.
"I will try my best, but it's going to be really hard with the shape that Michael's in."
