Team Tuesday tame Gibson Street but still can't outrun the clock

Forty-four seconds. That’s what the lights partway up Gibson Street gave Iain today, racing for Team Tuesday, three seconds faster than his last visit and enough for a personal best on the climb proper. The half-climb version fell too, by the same margin, and by the time the gradient eased into the trimmed section for the traffic lights he was still flying, good enough for third best ever on that stretch. For a rider who has spent this Tour being described as steady rather than spectacular, it was a proper statement on the one hill the whole route can’t avoid.

What followed was less kind. The long drag back through Byker and out along Shields Road, which felt generous on the way in, reasserted itself as the slog it always is on tired legs, and by Chilli Road Dash Reversed things had properly unravelled: the slowest of nineteen attempts at that segment, 89% off his best. Four Lane Ends brought no relief, his slowest showing there in nine tries either, with the unnamed segment straight after following the same pattern. It was, by any measure, Team Tuesday’s slowest ride home of the whole Tour.

There was a small flourish saved for the finish. Four Lane Dash produced the second-best time Iain has ever recorded there, a reminder that the legs were never truly gone, just spent unevenly. A westerly breeze sat across the road throughout, sunshine overhead, nothing dramatic in the air even where the bridge usually stirs something up.

On the general classification, Team Friday extend an 18-stage stranglehold at the top, still 102 seconds per 10 km clear of Team Wednesday. Team Tuesday, already out of the top three since week two, now sit fourth and have slipped further behind Team Monday, the gap widening from 2 to 12 seconds per 10 km. The hill was won today. The Tour was not.