In a car park in Asiago on Saturday afternoon, Movistar manager Eusebio Unzue was already smilingly resigned to the inevitable, though he dared not admit as much then, with 29.3 kilometres of the Giro d'Italia still to run.
After the final mountain stage of the Giro, Nairo Quintana was in the pink jersey, with a lead of 53 seconds over the man most likely to depose him, fourth-placed Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb). It was never going to be enough, not with a flat time trial to come the following afternoon. "We could have done with another minute," Unzue said wistfully. "I would have liked 1:53…"
Quintana clawed back 3:34 on Dumoulin during the Giro's final week, but considering the terrain and the circumstances, it was a disappointing turnaround. The race's final act featured four mountain stages, including three in succession, but Quintana failed to take advantage of the favourable contours of the route book. His underwhelming final week is brought into sharper focus by the fact that some 2:10 of the time gained came on stage 16 to Bormio, where Dumoulin was forced to stop for an abrupt toilet break at the base of the Umbrailpass.
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For the rest of the week – and even when he tracked Nibali atop the Umbrailpass – Quintana's accelerations lacked the bite and conviction of the final week of the 2014 Giro, say, or his breakout Tour de France of 2013. Has the world changed or has Nairo Quintana changed?
"I think Nairo was missing that percentage point of brilliance he's had in the past," Unzue said. "On this Giro, apart from the day of the Blockhaus, he hasn't been able to make the difference. The level of the favourites has been very even."
Even if Quintana had defied the odds and held onto his maglia rosa on the final afternoon – and he did, in the end, produce a respectable time trial to retain second place overall, 31 seconds behind Dumoulin – it was clear that his Giro 2017 vintage had been some way short of his best. It was had more in common with his flat display at the 2016 Tour than his more effervescent Vuelta a España later that summer.
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