TOB: Wouter Poels take victory in stage four but Albasini keeps the lead

Wouter Poels launched an attack on the final climb of the day to beat teammate Borut Bozic and win stage four of the Tour of Britain amid panic for the organisers.

The Dutchman survived the early attacks made on the group to ride away from his teammate Bozic by five seconds. The win added to the news he’d received the day before that he would be part of the team going to the World Championships after Laurens Ten Dam crashed in the Vuelta.

Stage four took riders from Minehead to Teignmouth and was billed as the Queen stage of this year’s tour. It proved to be too difficult for most of the field who couldn’t keep up with the pace set by the front group.


HTC don't like the Hills
With several of the HTC Columbia riders not suiting the hills of Devon and two riders in the top ten Poels Vacansoleil team did much of the work to try and take over the lead. It seemed like they could do it when Dan Martin had made a big breakaway with Vacansoleil rider Johnny Hoogerland. Hoogerland looked like he would put on the leader jersey at the end of the day, but the pair were pull back in the last 15km by HTC.

Tony Martin from HTC spent most of the stage on the front of the peloton trying to protect the slim lead of Michael Albasini. With Mark Renshaw and André Griepel not favouring the tough course it was down to the German time-trial champion to keep Columbia at the front.

Panic for the Organisers
Tour of Poland winner Martin caused the peloton to thin out drastically attacking from the first kilometre. Many of the other riders couldn’t keep up with the pace and fell behind the 20% time limit. Organisers were worried that they wouldn’t be able to keep the roads open long enough.

Organisers asked the British teams, who have failed to impress in this year’s tour, to step up the pace. However, with over 70 riders in the group organisers “overlooked” and rider that came in over the allowed time limit.

The stage shook up the minor places but the top ten stayed almost status quo. Albasini managed to keep a 1.28 minute lead ahead of Saxo Bank rider Richie Porte, but it is still all very close at the top with only 1.42 separating the top five. Despite losing out on taking over the leader’s jersey Bozic moved up to third and Hoogerland replaced Richie Porte as the King of the Mountains leader.