It was all change today on the Tour of Britain as Emilien Berges of the Agritubel team leapt clear of an eight rider group to claim the stage and take the overall race lead. The hilly route through the Blackdown Hills from Chard to Burnham on Sea in Somerset was never going to favour the sprinters and Alessandro Petacchi (LPR Brakes) had a particularly difficult day. Petacchi who won the first stage on Sunday and was overall race leader at the start today suffered an early mechanical problem and finished over 13 minutes down on the young Frenchman Berges to end the day back in 24th place on the general classification. Berges broke clear with 8Km to go to win the stage by 30 seconds from his team-mate Geoffroy Lequarte. The latter lead the race for 80Km of the 185Km stage and now lies in second place behind Berges for an Agritubel one two. Berges now heads the general classification by 29 seconds from Lequarte, but nine of the top 10 are still within 50 seconds of the leader so there is still everything to play for in what may well turn out to be the most open Tour of Britain to date. British riders lead by Ian Stannard (Great Britain) occupy sixth to 10th place in the general classification, but there is better news for home fans in the points race where Roger Hammond (Columbia) took the lead from Petacchi by finishing in 12th place. Kristian House (Rapha Condor) also held on to his lead in the King of the Mountains competition. Tomorrow’s stage takes the riders on a 156Km route from Worcester Race Course to Stoke on Trent. Tour of Britain stage three results: 1 Emilien Berges (Fra) Agritubel, 4hrs 49mins 22secs 2 Geoffroy Lequarte (Fra) Agritubel, at 30secs 3 Gabriele Bosisio (Ita) LPR Brakes, same time 4 Daniel Martin (Ire) Garmin, same time 5 Benny De Schrooder (Bel) An Post, same time 6 Ian Stannard (GB) Great Britain, same time 7 Steve Cummings (GB) Barloworld, same time 8 Daniel Fleeman (GB) An Post, same time 9 Frederik Veuchelen (GB) Topsport Vlaanderen at 39secs 10 Russell Downing (GB) Pinarello RT – Candi TV at 1min 45secs Selected others: 12 Roger Hammond (GB) Columbia, at 1min 56secs 15 Kristian House (GB) Rapha-Condor, at 2mins 21 Jonathan Bellis (GB) CSC-Saxo Bank, at 2mins 5secs 30 Bradley Wiggins (GB) Columbia, at 13mins 2secs 37 David Millar (GB) Garmin, at same time 41 Rob Hayles (GB) Great Britain, at same time 78 Geraint Thomas (GB) Barloworld, at same time 82 Ben Swift (GB) Great Britain, at same time General classification (after four stages): 1 Emilen Berges (Fra) Agritubel, 10hrs 6mins 17secs 2 Geoffroy Lequarte (Fra) Agritubel, at 29secs 3 Gabriele Bosisio (Ita) LPR Brakes, at 36secs 4 Ian Stannard (GB) Great Britain, at 37secs 5 Steve Cummings (GB) Barloworld, at same time 6 Daniel Fleeman (Ire) An Post, at 39secs 7 Benny de Schrooder (Bel) An Post, at 40secs 8 Daniel Martin (Ire) Garmin, at same time 9 Frederik Veuchelen (Bel) Topsport, at 49secs 10 Russell Downing (GB) Pinarello, at 1min 50secs Selected others: 12 Roger Hammond (GB) Columbia, at 2mins 6secs 15 Kristian House (GB) Rapha-Condor, at same time 19 Jonathan Bellis (GB) CSC-Saxo Bank, at 2mins 15secs 24 Alessandro Petacchi (Ita) LPR Brakes, at 13mins 2secs 26 Danilo di Luca (GB) LPR Brakes, at 13 mins 4secs 27 Rod Hayles (GB) Great Britain, at 13 mins 6secs 35 Ben Swift (GB) Great Britain, at same time 49 David Millar (GB) Garmin, at same time 56 Geraint Thomas (GB) Barloworld, at same time 76 Chris Newton (GB) Rapha-Condor, at same time 84 Bradley Wiggins (GB) Columbia, at 13mins 58secs
Tour of Britain Stage 3 Berges wins to lead overall
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@capedcrusader It's actually pretty simple - sex (or to more precise: attractive appearance) sells. It works exactly the same way with cars. Making the final product look better often costs next to nothing, but it does add value and thus allows the manufacturer to charge more for the same product.
It does mean something: f*** off you lycra-clad car-botherers.
It might mean that, if it was red. But since it's blue it doesn't mean anything.
YMMV. To my eye, while the 'ruby', only available for SRAM S-Works is the clear standout, the rest of the options on the top two tiers (including the single option for Shimano S-Works) are either really boring or, in the case of the two-tone efforts, actively rubbish, while the solid blue that's only available on the bottom two tiers is easily the second best.
@jackcycles It would certainly be interesting to know the prevalence of general cycling amongst children then vs now because its probably pretty unlikely that children who don't cycle much day to day are going to cycle to school.
Why do bike companies insist on differentiating their top tier and lower tier offerings by producing shockingly bad colours for the lower tier bikes? Sucks big time if you ask me.
Setting aside the tedious and untrue "extreme heatwaves" quote from the article, I've never understood why cyclists and cars alike aren't compelled to be brightly coloured. Not only would this create a highly visible scene, naturally reducing the number of accidents in the road, wearing light colours and having white cars would naturally reflect heat and sun back into the atmosphere, lowering ambient temperatures, creating less need for air conditioning or hydration. Win-win. Domestic car journeys create 16% of UK CO2 emissions, and the UK itself creates less than 1% of global totals. With the increasing proportion of electric vehicle journeys, that figure will only shrink in future. So framing this as some kind of existential argument is alarmist, short-sighted and false.
@mdavidford That's quite the marquee of someone with tunnel mindedness. I'm not sure I want to know the inner thoughts that have led you to this camp. I shall be poleite though, there are some guys patrolling on this site who are very tightly strung and all it takes some bell to get under their dome and teepee them into a right Mess. Not that I'd peg you as one of them, you seem quite grounded.
Arguments over niceties like that won't fly, and anyway, I wasn't canvassing opinions - if they want to pitch things like this they should do it somewhere else.
Maybe - but this is a little tent.