Tao Geoghegan Hart turned in a spectacular Giro d'Italia time trial performance on Sunday and ensures that Ineos Grenadiers have two leaders in the overall classification battle and puts the Londoner in an excellent position to fight for a second overall title.
Geoghegan Hart has already proven he is in top climbing shape this spring when he won the Tour of the Alps, and his ability to follow Primož Roglič and Geraint Thomas on Saturday's hilly stage confirmed he was still on form for the Giro's mountains. But his time trialling was never considered one of his stronger points.
That changed notably on Sunday when the 2020 Giro d'Italia winner finished a standout third on the time trial, ahead of well-known specialist Stefan Kung (Groupama-FDJ) and only just behind two other high-quality experts against the clock, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) and Geoghegan Hart's teammate Geraint Thomas.
Briefly the leader on the stage before he was pipped to the post by Evenepoel and Thomas, Geoghegan Hart has now jumped to fourth overall, 50 seconds down on Evenepoel, who regained the race lead.
He remains in the thick of the overall battle with almost all the mountains, his favoured field of action ahead of him. It remains to be seen who is the best climber, but Geoghegan Hart is clearly a key player in the Giro GC mix.
"I felt good which is the most important thing," Geoghegan Hart said "It was hard to judge all the corners and stuff because you really don't want to take risks, so then you always end up a bit wondering which ones you didn't do great."
"But that's kind of normal for a stage race, especially a Grand Tour. So I'm happy it's a rest day tomorrow."
When it was put to him that Ineos Grenadiers looked very much like the strongest GC team, Geoghegan Hart, having just finished racing, said he was yet not in a position to be certain. "Dan Bigham [Ineos' performance engineer] looks happy and I guess that's a good sign."
Geoghegan Hart said his notable improvement in time trialling was partly due to the UCI's more permissive regulations for time trial positions. "To be honest, I feel much more comfortable on the TT bike. So that's good.
"And in the end when you have good condition, it's always easier to do a good time trial, of course."
He had not been overly nervous about the rainy conditions on the course because how you handle such situations, he said, "is probably more in your hands than any normal stage, flat stage, it's up to you how you want to race.
"I felt good in the recon - you have to accept you're never going to get every corner perfect, some of them going to be not quite, you just have to hope it averages out in the end.
"We knew the corners were going to make a big difference today, but still you can only focus on putting the power down in the flat."
Geoghegan Hart was not so forthcoming was whether he now considered himself a contender for a repeat crack at the maglia rosa, replying simply, "It's a long way to go mate, so for now we'll enjoy tomorrow [the rest day] and we'll see."
Despite his downbeat answer, there could be no doubting the elation in the Ineos Grenadiers camp at such a strong collective time trial performance. Filippo Ganna, their star rider in the speciality, may have been missing after testing positive for COVID-19 a few days ago, but there could be no doubt on his favoured terrain and in his home race, his teammates did the Italian proud.
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