The Dane was not chasing the finish in Roquetes. By the time Matthew Brennan swept past Jordi Meeus for his second bunch-sprint win in as many days, Pedersen was somewhere further back, legs empty, and content with the trade.

“As I said before the stage, the priority was to help Skjelmose,” he said after the finish.

“I knew it was going to be a hard day, and I don’t think I had particularly high hopes of making it to the finish and sprinting because I knew I would have to do so much work for Mattias today.”

Lidl-Trek’s Grand Tour is being built around Skjelmose. He arrived in Spain fresh from sixth overall at the Tour de France as the team’s designated GC leader, with the two individual time trials and a stack of summit finishes on this route working in his favour.

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A day the crosswinds never came

The 173-kilometre run from Falset to Roquetes was billed as a potential echelon ambush along the Ebro delta. The peloton raced accordingly. The wind, mostly, did not turn up.

“We never really got proper crosswinds, but the race was ridden as if there were crosswinds, and that still costs a lot of energy when you’re doing that work,” Pedersen said.

“There isn’t much left when you have to ride like that and then try to stay with the group afterwards.”

Brief echelons did form, and the nervous tempo held right through to the late Coll de l’Alba. Skjelmose came through untouched.

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Skjelmose safe in eighth

That was the whole point of Pedersen’s day. Tadej Pogačar kept the red jersey, and Skjelmose stayed eighth overall, 4:06 down on the race leader.

“All in all, it’s fine,” Pedersen said.

“He didn’t lose any time, so everything went as it should.”

A former world champion and one of the fastest men in the peloton, Pedersen is capable of winning bunch sprints, reduced sprints and the sort of punchy Ardennes-style finishes littered across the first half of any Vuelta. Roquetes, on paper, was one of his.

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Instead he spent it towing team-mates through the wind and watching a 21-year-old British debutant go two-for-two in sprints.

Thursday’s stage 6 runs 178 kilometres from Alcossebre to Castellón de la Plana, with a gravel sector and a 20% ramp on the Puerto El Bartolo before a 16-kilometre descent to the line.

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