The sprinters were meant to come to the fore on stage 18 of the Tour de France after a brutal period in the Alps, but they were left fuming after being outfoxed by four riders who, ironically, started the race supporting some of the best fast men in the business.
How Kasper Asgreen (Soudal Quick-Step) won the stage from the day's break that included Lotto Dstny pair Pascal Eenkhoorn and Victor Campenaerts, plus Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X), after being kept on a tight leash all day was a point of conjecture at the finish.
Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco-Alula) declined to speak to the media after missing a chance to break Jasper Philipsen's clean sweep of bunch sprints, having remarked only days earlier how fresh he felt compared to previous Tours, thanks largely to his preparation that focused more on climbing.
"A few years ago, I was always alone or with some riders around me, and now I'm climbing a bit better, it makes the Tour easier to survive," Groenewegen said after Tuesday's decisive time trial.
"We did last year Dauphiné, also this year, I think for me it's a good preparation. A lot of sprinters are at home. If you don't have the legs to survive all the climbs, then also you can't sprint in Paris, so that's what we trained for.
"A lot of people are smiling a little bit that I did Dauphiné but it's all about surviving this hard Tour de France.
"We all saw Philipsen is in really good shape but also my shape is really good. I feel actually not tired so that's a good sign. I'm ready for the last sprints and hopefully, we can get one."
But it wasn't to be in Bourg-en-Bresse, where Jayco-Alula director of high-performance Matt White echoed the purported mood on the bus – angry – speaking briefly post-race about the lost opportunity.
"You watch television, you saw the final. It is what it is, isn't it," White said. "I think there was interesting movement in the final there. It made for great television with so many motorbikes around, but it's disappointing.
"We committed today and to not catch that breakaway is disappointing."
Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) was the best of the chasing peloton that lost several of its top sprinters, including Asgreen's teammate Fabio Jakobsen, Eenkhoorn and Campaenaerts' main man Caleb Ewan, as well as Mark Cavendish (Astana-Qazaqstan) in the first two weeks.
So, two key teams who would have normally been controlling the breakaway on Thursday were actually in the move and cunningly beat the system.
Philipsen, who remains in the green jersey, did not expect that the breakaway would be able to hold its small margin.
"The last 15km was very fast. We were riding full gas and they never had more than one minute, and they stay in front, so they must have ridden also incredibly hard," Philipsen said.
But he knew in the sprint that catching them was a lost cause.
"I saw there were two Lottos, and they will not gamble," he added.
Soudal Quick-Step sports director Tom Steels wouldn't go so far to say the peloton underestimated the escapees, who he described as specialists.
"With Campenaerts going in his TT position almost, Kasper loves to ride a TT, also Abrahamsen, so they were very strong riders and they understood each other, and at the back they suffered," Steels said.
"They had nothing to lose. Lotto lost their sprinter, we lost our sprinter, and I must say they also like it, the guys in the front, just to break away to be in the breakaway in the Tour is something different; all the public, it's like riding four hours in the theatre. You go 10% faster in the Tour also."
Steels believed yesterday's queen stage to Courchevel, and the accumulated fatigue from almost three weeks of racing, played a part in the result. However, he emphasised the smart tactics of the four men in the break, who took what they knew about sprinting and used it to their advantage in a different way.
"Everybody is more tired after a stage like yesterday, 5000 altitude metres, it was a really brutal stage. That last climb was a never-ending story," Steels said.
"But the Tour is often a lot of character. Physically everybody is dead. You cannot say that nobody is tired. Everybody is tired, and then the character takes over. It's not a surprise that a guy like Kasper, Campenaerts, that they are in the front. Winning a Tour stage is often more character.
"We know by experience also how tough it is to control a break," Steels continued. "We know with Tim Declercq, he is the guy that usually controls the break and he always has to push it the whole day very hard to tire also the break and the front. If you don't do that you end up with fresh riders in the final and that's maybe what happened today."
Sprinters have another shot at line honours, at least on paper, on tomorrow's Tour de France stage 19 - a 172.8km lumpy run from Moirans-en-Montagne to Poligny that includes two categorised climbs, and again on the last stage to Paris.
