Dan Martin will take away the positives from his ride at Volta ao Algarve, though his performance against the watch on today's final stage won't be one of them.
The Irish rider had said before the test that aiming for he overall title, and doing a TT to keep himself in the fight for that prize, would be difficult.
Due to the coronavirus he only received his TT bike very recently and has not had a chance to familiarise himself with it and tweak his position.
That really showed today on a 20.3km flat and technical course when he lost almost two minutes to race leader Remco Evenepoel.
The 20-year-old Deceuninck-QuickStep rider started today's test in Lagoa leading the race but on the same time as Martin and 3rd placed overall Max Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe).
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That meant Evenepoel was chasing Martin for two minutes and he almost caught the Irishman on the line; the yellow jersey winning the stage in a time of 24:07.
He was ten seconds faster than runner-up, and world champion, Rohan Dennis (Team Ineos). The winner of the stage last year, Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ), was 3rd a further nine seconds back.
Martin finished in 56th place, 1:59 down on Evenepoel. And that saw him slip from 2nd overall this morning to 11th in the final standings.
However, he claimed a very impressive 2nd place on the summit finish yesterday, behind Miguel Angel Lopez (Astana), and also placed 3rd on the first uphill finish of the race, on stage 2.
Those performances, coupled with strong climbing rides in Valencia two weeks ago, show he is in very good form at this early point of the year as he works towards the Ardennes Classics.
The only other Irishman in the race in Portugal, Ryan Mullen (Trek-Segafredo), was 4th on this stage last year but he was further back this time around; in 31st place and 1:11 down on Evenepoel.
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