Team Wednesday's puncheurs punctured on their own climb

119%. That is where this one starts, because that is where it went wrong first: Iain’s slowest run at Four Lane End Climb in ten attempts, a full 80 seconds off his best there. For a team built to attack the short, sharp stuff, that is not a stumble, it is a statement. Team Wednesday, racing as the Puncheurs, are supposed to send their rider up these little kicks and regret it gently by the top. Today the regret arrived early and stayed.

It did not get better on the bridge crossing. The pedestrian path leg was 46 seconds down on last time, and by the time the route reached Stepney from the Cobbles, the slide had become a pattern: slowest of five attempts there too, 121% off the best. A westerly breeze crossing the road at 13 km/h and a passing shower will not have helped a rider trying to find rhythm on exposed tarmac, though nothing here suggests conditions alone explain a day this laboured.

Inland, half a mile from the river, there is a stillness that lets sound travel further than it has any right to, and today’s leg felt like it was riding through that same hush rather than fighting for grip against it. Small mercy, cold comfort.

The general classification tells its own story of erosion. Team Friday extend an already commanding lead into a twentieth consecutive stage on top, untouched since week 1. Team Wednesday sit second, but the gap to the team above has crept out again, from 102 to 103 seconds per 10 km, and today’s ride is exactly the kind of stage that grows a deficit rather than shrinks it. For the defending champions of the August Tour, still second overall, this was a day to forget on both of the climbs that were supposed to be their business.