"We had a little tea party on the KoM," Shaw joked when he reached the finish in Maeztu. "No, I don't think any cameras picked it up, but we were getting our glasses cleaned in the car and we were filling up on drinks for about three or four minutes - or maybe more, it felt like a lifetime. Every group that came over the climb, I said 'OK, this is it,' but then I'd see I had to wait for the next one."
"I think the cat's out of the bag now, it's obvious we're here for Richie," Shaw said. "We're all in for Richie to come here and do the best result we can, and we want that to be a win."
Carapaz's fellow Ecuadorian Jefferson Cepeda had helped to tee up the move on the climb itself, while Shaw and Doull provided reinforcements when their leader crested the summit with only an elite cadre of podium contenders on his wheel.
The addition of Shaw and Doull's impetus, meanwhile, saw the red jersey Ben O'Connor briefly distanced on the rippling plateau over the summit. O'Connor soon scrambled his way back up to the Carapaz group, but the entire offensive was a statement of intent from EF-EasyPost.
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