Dan Martin may have narrowly missed out on a stage win and the yellow jersey at Volta ao Algarve today but the Irish rider looks rejuvenated.
The evidence is now rapidly mounting up that a switch to Israel Start-Up Nation and to basing his training more on feel than data has relaunched the Irish rider after a flat season last year.
Now aged 32 years and much closer to the end of his career than the beginning, any suggestion last year was the beginning of the end for the double monument winner and treble Grand Tour stage winner have been largely swept aside just weeks into this new season.
Today Martin was 2nd on stage 4 in Portugal as Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana) kicked inside the final kilometre of the 3km climb of Malhão to win in impressive fashion.
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Martin went after Lopez and when he did the other rides in the select group who were on his wheel, including race leader Remco Evenepoel (Deceuninck-QuickStep), couldn't live with the Irishman's speed.
His kick was reminiscent of the one that delivered his last big win, atop Mur de Bretagne at the 2018 Tour de France.
And while Martin still has a way to go to capture that kind of form, he looks rejuvenated and there may be big days ahead for him very soon.
Today he was hampered a little by a lack of team mates as the peloton was whittled down to a select group of about 15 just before the final climb began.
Martin at first looked laboured but when the pace eased a little about halfway up the climb he rolled to the front and was in the thick of the action from that point.
He put in a modest dig to test those around him as the final kilometre began and eased back almost instantly, with Lopez taking it up with about 500 metres to go.
The Colombian attacked, opening a small gap at first, chased all the way by Martin. As the finish line neared, the gap between Lopez and Martin grew a little, and those behind Martin drifted further and further away from his back wheel.
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In the end Lopez was simply too strong; taking a great victory by two seconds from Martin.
Race leader Evenepoel - who looked human on the climb - put in a very big final 200 hundred metres and closed in on Dan Martin a little.
In the end there was a margin of two seconds between Martin and Evenepoel and had the Irish cyclist managed to eek out just one more second on the young Belgian he would have taken the yellow jersey.
Evenepoel and, second placed overall this morning, Maximilian Schachmann (Bora-Hansgrohe) started the day on the same time and finished the stage together.
It means Evenepoel still leads the race, with Dan Martin now in 2nd and Schachmann in 3rd overall; all three on the same time going into tomorrow's final 20.3km TT.
Lopez is now 4th overall, just one second down on the top three, with Rui Costa (UAE Team Emirates) in 5th place a further one second back.
Going into the final TT, European champion Evenepoel is red hot favourite to take the stage win and the overall, though hopefully Irish rider Ryan Mullen (Trek-Segafredo) can make an impact.
Martin has said because his TT bike was delivered to him very late this year he has not had a chance to ride it. That factor, combined with the fact a flat TT does not suit him anyway, means he is not fancied for the test.
But given how well he has climbed today, and in the last couple of weeks in his first races, whatever happens in the race against the clock tomorrow, he looks back to his old self.
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