Vacansoleil goes one-two

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Stage four was billed as the queen stage of this year's Tour of Britain, and it lived up that title as Wout Poels of Vacansoleil finished five seconds clear of his teammate Borut Bozic to take the stage in the seaside town of Teignmouth, in Devon. He left a shattered field behind him. In fact, the course, which took in three first category climbs, proved so hard that a large part of the field was set to finish outside the time limit and faced elimination. However, for those who did miss the cut-off it was "overlooked".

"Today was a super day for the team," said stage winner Poels.

The day was catastrophic in terms of the minor placings, but did nothing to change the main contenders with Michael Albasini of HTC-Columbia holding on to the yellow jersey and increasing his time over the second place by rider by two seconds to give him a 1:28 advantage. What did change, though was the second place rider, with Greg Henderson (Team Sky) slipping to third and Richie Porte (Saxo Bank) jumping one place to be second overall.

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Although the Vacansoleil rider Pouls won the stage after escaping from a small group towards the end of the 106-mile stage, it was the Irish rider Dan Martin (Garmin-Transitions) who added the dynamite to today's stage, attacking early on with Johnny Hoogerland (Vacansoleil) and staying at the front of the race for most of the day.

"We decided as a team to make the race hard (today) because we knew Columbia sent a very strong team, but we also know that (Mark) Renshaw and (Andre) Greipel are not the riders who can close gaps in the mountains," said Hoogerland.

Once Martin had gone away, Matthew Hayman of Sky left a trio that was trying to bridge the gap and got across on his own and this group was later joined by another group of chasers to swell the numbers.

"I had fun out there and it was unbelievable the number of people by the side of the road which was fantastic to see," said Martin. "Those roads today are lot easier when you're racing them, but the way I raced them, it was really hard. Some of those roads are bit dangerous and so you have to think what if there's a crash. It is, though, beautiful countryside that we have here and it was an epic day."

"Everyone was pulling in the three-up break I was in, but I think we were all really tired at the end, but everyone was committed and it was a good little group. I think it shows the strength in depth of the peloton here," said Martin. "That was a world class breakaway and it has been a really hard week. The way the race is structured it is hard all day. In Europe, it is hard for the first hour, and then it gets faster and faster and the last hour is really hard where as the racing here is a wearing down process."

Chasing hard across rainy and mist covered Somerset, which is beautiful when you can see it, was a group of about 30 with HTC-Columbia and particularly Tony Martin again doing much of the work in the yellow jersey group, although those riders were slowed by a series of punctures. The leading group had an advantage of up to four minutes, but with the final categorised climb of the day approaching, the lead shrunk to under two minutes.

As the riders crested the final King of the Mountain climb just outside Sidmouth, there were exactly 30 miles to the finish. With 20 miles to go, Hoogerland was the leader on the road, but as the chase picked up pace, he lost his virtual jersey, although he did move up from tenth to fifth place overall.

The lead group stayed clear despite the collected efforts of HTC-Columbia and Saxo Bank, although it fragmented in the final few miles and the treacherous descent into the finish which saw Poels of the Netherlands take the win by five seconds.

"In the beginning we did a lot on the first climb trying to drop a lot of guys and then Johnny attacked and I thought he had a good chance to win," said Poels, "but Columbia started riding with Saxo Bank and then there was a chance for me to win the stage. At first I attacked with 8km to go, but they caught me and I had a bit of recuperation and then I attacked again at 4km to go on the little hill and then (laughing), they didn't see me anymore!"

The daily combativity award went to a Dan Martin, with Porte losing the King of the Mountains jersey to Hoogerland but keeping the sprint classification jersey.

"I'll be pretty peeved if I don't get the aggressive award!" said Martin before the award was announced. "Every time I went, there was a GC guy there and I was trying to get them to sit up and go back, but Hoogerland wouldn't because he was sure Columbia was going to blow up. Even when I went solo, they still chased me down."

"I think it's going to be difficult for us to control the race, but, we are not sitting in the peloton, we are still fighting," said Hoogerland of the upcoming stages.

Martin also noted the effect of small teams on the race. "It can make it a bit negative and if teams get in a breakaway, the race just shuts down. I think if there were eight-man teams, it would be a totally different race but that would change the character of the race and you don't want to change that."

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