Team Thursday crown a Local Legend, then crawl home to prove it was a fluke

Eleven times up this stretch, and never slower: that is the verdict on Byker to Four Lane Ends, where Iain, racing for Team Thursday, came home 59% off his best and a full three minutes down on his last visit. It is the kind of number that makes a directeur sportif reach for the panic button, except there wasn’t one, because the rest of the ride had already made its excuses.

It started well enough. The lights up Gibson Street behaved, more or less, and the short brutal climb away from the Ouseburn was done inside a minute, as it always is. Byker Bridge brought its usual theatre — gulls overhead, the valley dropping away on the left — and with the south-westerly for once blowing in the right direction, the crossing felt almost generous. Shields Road sagged under tired legs rather than traffic, and by Chillingham Road the coffee smell drifting from the shopfronts was doing more for morale than the stopwatch was.

Then came the horror show on Byker to Four Lane Ends, and nothing since has quite recovered from it. Benton Road, usually the engine room of this route, offered only a slow rise and no urgency to match. But out past Forest Hall, on the run that always decides these things late, Iain found something: a Local Legend taken on Hedley Hammer, the fastest average any rider has strung together on that stretch, snatched from under a weary field of one.

It will not rescue the overall picture. Team Friday remain out in front, 30 stages unbroken at the top, with Team Wednesday second and the gap to them a chasm Team Thursday cannot close. But the duel directly above matters more day to day, and this ride nudged it the wrong way — Team Thursday now 7 seconds per 10 km adrift of Team Wednesday, out from 5 before the stage, with their Tour average now essentially settled. A legend taken, a Tour lost by inches. That is the Diesels all over.