When the break went clear with Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) among them, and the diminutive Spaniard sat in the wheels, he always looked a likely contender for the stage.
And so it proved, as he repeated his stage three victory to take his career tally to three Tour de France wins.
As far as the GC goes, it is over for Rodriguez, but he proved he can still make his mark on the big races with an unanswerable attack.
The pain clearly set in, but by that point he was already well clear of his nearest chaser, Jakob Fuglsang.
He compared himself to Spanish football club Atletico Madrid after the stage, suggesting you never know when you will see his best form.
But his best form was certainly on show on stage 12 and it raises the prospect of a bid for the polka dot jersey too, which he will wear on stage 13 thanks to moving second in the mountains classification, nine points behind Chris Froome.
He briefly challenged for it 12 months ago, but ultimately his recovery from a race-ending Giro d’Italia crash had taken too much out of him.
This year, he is well placed to take it on again – and having never won a Grand Tour despite all of his near-misses it will at least be a decent consolation.
A former King of the Mountains at the Vuelta a Espana (2005) and points classification winner at the Giro (2012), it will complete a career treble of sorts, if not the one many expected him to achieve when he battled for supremacy at the turn of the decade.
