When team tactics go right, top-flight sport is beautiful to watch.
Witness EF Education Oatly rider Magdaleine Vallieres, sporting the rainbow stripes as the reigning world road champion, sacrificing her own race to help set up teammate Noemi Ruegg on Monday at the Santos Tour Down Under.
Ruegg duly delivered, sprinting to the stage win and defending her overall title.
In contrast, few things are uglier than when the idea that "team work makes the dream work" instead pans out to be a very public nightmare.
The men's Tour Down Under cannot come quickly enough for the Australian Jayco AlUla team, who utterly botched the finish of the national championships road race two weekends ago.
And on Monday, UAE Team ADQ learned a brutal lesson about not wasting a very promising scenario.
Ruegg should have been on the back foot at the end of stage three, given she was up against UAE Team ADQ riders Paula Blasi, Mavi Garcia and Dominika Wlodarczyk.
Instead Ruegg kept calm, played the situation to perfection and stormed clear at the final sprint to claim the stage win and the title.
"In the end they kind-of did the lead-out for me, which was great as well," Reugg said.
Australian UAE Team ADQ rider Brodie Chapman was in the team car on Monday, having pulled out of the race the day before with illness.
"We'll definitely have a good debrief," she said.
The key was that for all their attacking, the UAE Team ADQ trio were unable to break Ruegg on the second Corkscrew Rd climb, 6km from the high-speed finish.
Once Ruegg weathered that storm, despite being outnumbered, the scenario was in her favour.
"We just want to look back and see how we might have been able to make a difference on the climb a bit earlier," Chapman said.
"But we knew once you're at the top of the climb - and ultimately it's quite a short climb - it's very difficult to move away from a fast finisher."
There were some consolations. Blasi won the Queen Of The Mountain category and UAE Team ADQ took out the team classification.
They were also upbeat, noting the result showed they collectively had strong form.
There were also problems with in-race communications, which did not help.
But they were still left with much to work through.
"We really tried our best, we really tried to work together, but at the end Noemi was really, really strong, so 'chapeau' to her," Blasi said.
"For sure, today, I think we will have a long meeting.
"I'm quite confident the wins will come. In the final ... three from the same team, that's not the normal thing.
"It's a matter of time that things will work out."
