Team Thursday grind harder but Team Wednesday won't be caught

The duel with Team Wednesday is the story now, and it did not go Team Thursday’s way, even on a day that looked like a good one on paper. Iain, racing for Team Thursday, put out plenty on the ride home, but the team above him in the table pulled further clear rather than closer, the margin stretching from 25 seconds per 10 km to 31.

It did not start promisingly. On The Front produced the slowest effort in fifteen attempts, well over double the best time ever posted there, a sluggish way to open the leg despite sunshine and a following breeze doing the pushing for once. The rest of the ride home told a different tale, though, as if the legs needed the flat sprint out of the system before they’d cooperate.

Short Benton was where things turned. Third best ever there, in 3:12, with the tank clearly finding something it hadn’t offered earlier. And then, right at the death, a genuine highlight: a personal best on the unnamed segment that closes out the route home, 21 seconds quicker than last time through. Two strong efforts back to back, the kind that should have hauled time back on the team above.

The wind at least behaved, a south-westerly at Iain’s back for the whole leg, sunshine overhead, the gulls presumably still working the river a mile behind by the time this all played out. None of it was enough. Team Friday remain out in front, 22 stages unbeaten now, utterly untouchable from here. But the real fight in this Tour is one place back, and Team Wednesday have just answered Team Thursday’s best punches of the day by staying out of reach. The gap widened, not narrowed, and that is the number that will sting longest.