Team Monday sign off with a flourish on the hill that always hurt

Forty-five seconds. That is what the watch showed at the top of Gibson Street, a full 61 seconds quicker than last time out and enough to make it the best Iain, racing for Team Monday, has ever managed on that stretch of tarmac. On a Tour that has not always smiled on this team, it was the kind of number that makes a whole ride worthwhile.

It did not stand alone. Lower down the same hill, the short opening ramp yielded the second-best time ever recorded there, just a second off the outright best, and further up the trimmed section for the traffic lights went third-best on record too. Three climbing segments, three entries in the history books, all inside the same short, brutal ascent that the route notes have never been shy about calling honest. For a rider who usually treats that gradient as something to survive rather than enjoy, this was as good as it gets.

The rest of the ride settled into a more familiar shape, the legs paying for their effort as Shields Road and the long drag out past Four Lane Ends ticked over steadily rather than spectacularly, under a clear 17°C sky that asked nothing extra of anyone. Down at the bottom of the hill the Ouseburn’s own smell drifted up as always, a small reminder of where the effort had actually been spent.

But context matters, and this was Team Monday’s final leg of the Tour, meaning their overall average is now settled for good: 22.9 km/h, good for fourth, still 3 seconds per 10 km shy of Team Thursday above them and nowhere near the top three they last saw back in week 3. Team Friday, serene as ever, remain out front. A superb hill cannot rewrite a whole Tour, but it was a fine, defiant note for Team Monday to finish on.