To be a GC contender requires patience, as Tom Pidcock is learning in this Vuelta: "Pretty uneventful so far"

Of course, we had already seen some high wattages in the first week of the Vuelta, but that hardly made any difference. Vingegaard built up a small buffer mainly through bonus seconds, but the vast majority of the other GC contenders are within half a minute of the Dane. That includes Pidcock. The 26-year-old Brit from Q36.5 hasn't really lost any time yet, but surprisingly, he hasn't really shown himself in the punchy finishes either.

Pidcock is going all out for the GC, so after an attempt to win stage 2, his focus is mainly on saving, saving, saving. “The Vuelta has so far been quite uneventful; the uphill finishes on days 6 and 7 were pretty boring. Andorra on Thursday was tough, but Friday's final climb wasn't tough enough. It will be interesting to see what happens when we get to a stage where the differences will be made.”

So far, everything is close together, so the big question remains: have we already seen the relative strengths of the riders? Or are there more riders like Pidcock, who have let themselves be carried along without reacting to everything? "I think I've felt pretty good, I'm maybe waiting for the days when it will actually count. Well, I think people are racing smart, you know, everybody knows what is to come with the amount of hilltop finishes, and these are hilltop finishes where differences can't really be made because it's not really steep enough – especially with the speed we ride up them."

That will be different in the second and third weeks, as Pidcock knows. "People are being smart, and it makes sense. When we get to the stages where the differences will be made, it will be big fireworks." And then we will really see how the Briton performs, now that he says he is better prepared than ever for a good classification in a Grand Tour. “Going into the Giro, I was already quite tired because of the first part of the season. I think that will be the biggest difference in this Vuelta, because I've had really good preparation now, with a lot of training. I hope to put that into practice, because the numbers in training were better than in the Giro,” he said to IDLProCycling.com ahead of the race.