A sympathetic round of applause was all Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Soudal) was left with after the Belgian rider narrowly missed out on victory in the stage 3 time trial at the Volta ao Algarve.
The European champion and one of Lotto's newest recruits spent two and half hours in the hot seat on Friday after setting the best time earlier in the day. The 'hot seat' in this instance was an office chair positioned front and centre on the podium, meaning that Campenaerts cut a lonely and almost bizarre figure as he looked out upon the crowd as rider after rider came across the line.
In return, the crowd were rewarded with watching either the race on the big screen or Campenaerts tucking into a sandwich and checking his phone. At various points during the long day, it was hard to know which view was more interesting. What was in Campenaerts sandwich? Was Tony Martin going to challenge? In the end, we only found out the answer to one of these significant mysteries.
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At the last, it was Team Sky's Geraint Thomas who denied the European time trial champion the victory. Martin, Richie Porte and a host of other big names failed to trouble Campenaerts' time of 24:20 with only last-man and race leader Thomas able to sneak home 11 seconds faster.
A desolate Campenaerts put his head in his hands as he sat in perhaps the drabbest of thrones, before trudging back to the Lotto Soudal team bus.
"I was in that seat for a long time and you can imagine I was hoping for something else but Geraint Thomas is a really strong rider," he told Cyclingnews during his walk back to the Lotto sanctuary.
— Daniel Benson (@dnlbenson) February 16, 2018
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