Jesus Herrada took a long couple of minutes to recover from his all-out effort to clinch victory on the short but punishingly steep first summit finish of the Tour of Oman.
Bent almost double by the side of the road, lungs heaving and head bowed, the former Spanish champion caught his breath before celebrating with hugs to team staff and waves to his teammates as they rode past him on the sun-blasted, rocky summit of Qurayyat.
After being beaten by a single second in Qurayyat three years ago by eventual overall winner Alexey Lutsenko (Astana Qazaqstan), today's victory was one that clearly mattered a lot.
Thanks to being the fastest of a group of five in a peloton that shattered completely on the two-kilometre ascent, Herrada now commands a slender four-second lead overall ahead of Maxim Van Gils (Lotto-Dstny) and six on Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates).
Herrada knows how to handle himself in Oman's sometimes harsh heat and relentless mountain ascents, having taken third overall in 2019 and fourth in 2018. But the margins between the finishers will likely be much bigger on Monday's ascent of Jabal Haat.
"On Friday in the Muscat Classic I was already feeling pretty good," Herrada said afterwards. "I knew this finish from 2019 when I was second and I knew that if we got to the last climb all together as a bunch, if I was in good shape, few riders could beat me.
"We went up very quickly and I didn't want to take any risks, because everybody wanted to be ahead. It was a nervous finish, but in these wide roads you can sit on wheels a bit and then give it everything you've got right at the end."
A stage win in Oman is perhaps not Herrada's biggest career milestone to date, as he already has two stage wins and a spell in the lead in the 2018 Vuelta a España to his name, as well as a Spanish National Championships title, but he was feeling upbeat about his chances of winning overall after his first triumph of the 2023 season, and enjoying the heat after an unusually frigid start to the season in the Mallorca Challenge.
"It's hot but I prefer this a lot more than the weather to what it was like in Mallorca", he said with a smile.
"Day by day," he insisted. "One objective here was to get a stage win and now I've got that. So now I'll have to try and keep the jersey all the way to the finish."
