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Tour of Britain 09 - stage 4 · 15/09/09

Stage 4 of the 2009 Tour of Britain was a tense one for the boys in black as the first major climbs of the race brought with them the danger of losing time, and the pressure to be near the front throughout the day.

An early breakaway of three riders was joined by another trio to make six in the front as the race settled into a familiar pattern of a breakaway kept within reach by the peloton in anticipation of a bunch sprint.

I asked Tom Southam about the pattern of the race and he described a tense day of racing out on the course:

You try to be at the front all the time, it gets pretty boring, to start with they let a break go, then the yellow jersey does his usual thing of stopping for a piss as soon as two guys are down the road, it’s just boring, it goes quite slow, you’re just farting around to stay in position all day which is mentally fatiguing.

Picking up on what Tom mentioned about the yellow jersey stopping the bunch for a natural break, I asked if he felt the yellow jersey was using the etiquette of the bunch (not attacking when the yellow jersey stops) in a manipulative way to make life easier for himself:

With all due respect to the guy and to his team it’s just bullshit, if he does it again people are going to want to attack.

And attack they did in the latter part of the day as a number of riders tried to escape as the break was reeled in on the run in to Blackpool, amongst them Belgian Time Trial Champion, Maxime Monfort, who tried to escape in the dying moments of the stage. The end of the stage saw only a small group contest the finish after a crash a few metres from the end. I asked a number of the riders what happened including National Champion Kristian House:

It was a headwind finish, ‘everyone’s a sprinter’ and it must have stalled, there’s a lot of guys taking a lot of risks out there and somebody must have touched bars or overlapped wheels or something like that and people end up on the floor. It happened right in front of me, I didn’t come off, I weaved my way through a little. I don’t know who caused it.

After the first day in this year’s race where the climbs seem to have created gaps in the front of the race, I asked Kristian what there was to look forward to in Stoke on a stage he knows better than most, and whether today’s splits were a sign of things to come:

I imagine it is, people are starting to want to race and there are some people that don’t want to race. Some people just want to take it easy and race hard at the end and have it be a bunch kick, but I’m sure it’ll start breaking up. Tomorrow’s a hard day as well, the next three days are pretty hard so I’m sure it [a split] will happen. It’s just a question of making sure you’re in it. I’m looking forward to the race actually happening, that’s about as much as I’m looking forward to.

Tomorrows stage sees the riders start and finish in Stoke on Trent.

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