For a man whose Giro d'Italia challenge was shaken to its foundations the previous afternoon, setting out from a town named after a ruined medieval castle was hardly the most auspicious start to Sunday's mountain time trial to Alpe di Siusi.
Sitting on the start ramp in Castelrotto, a pleasant mountain town dwarfed by its backdrop of snow-dusted Dolomites, Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) knew that he would have to summon up a remarkable performance on the 10.8-kilometre climb if he was to re-enter the fight for pink after losing three minutes on Saturday's tappone.
The early omens were promising, as Valverde trailed Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) by just 12 seconds at the 4-kilometre mark. The Spaniard gauged his effort well thereafter, placing third on the day to finish 23 seconds behind both the surprise stage winner Alexander Foliforov (Gazprom-Rusvelo) and the maglia rosa Kruijswijk.
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On crossing the finish line, Valverde declined to stop for the waiting television crews, instead offering a few perfunctory statements – variations on "It was a really hard day" – as he soft-pedalled to the end of the road and then back again, before being ushered towards the anti-doping caravan.
The last starters had finished their efforts by the time Valverde emerged, and although his position on general classification (4th) remains the same and his deficit to Kruijswijk (3:29) has grown, he wore a broad smile and a back-turned baseball cap as he spoke to the reporters waiting outside.
"It was a day that neither completely good nor bad, it was just regular," Valverde said. "It was difficult today but I'm happy, I'm still in the fight and there's a lot of Giro still to come, a lot of stages to gain time."
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