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Published on Friday, 20 September 2013 23:57

Tour of Britain Stage 7 Preview

Epsom to Guildford, 155km

First off, apologies about the site being down all day, GoDaddy have been screwing me around all day and I have only just been able to get in to the site tonight at 10.45. So it will be a short report/preview as I need to get an early night, a long day tomorrow!1

The summit finish at Haytor lived up to its promise and definitely should be a regular occurance of the Tour of Britain - it was a dramatic finish and won brilliantly by young Simon Yates. Daniel Martin did exactly what I didn't want him to do and attacked on the lower slopes of the climb, but was reeled in quickly. When more attacks went he didn't have anything left and ended up having to look after Jack Bauer who was having a bad day and he was trying to save his GC position. A really disappointing end to what really should have been his stage, he should have held on and jumped in the last km. Whether he actually had the legs to do so is debatable given the way he fell away after his attacks, but I think he would have fared much better. 

I did say Yates at 20/1 was interesting but annoyingly didn't back him (well done to my follower who did at 40/1, @wooksteroo!), and also said Pardilla at 18/1 was interesting, he finished 4th. Thankfully my match bets treble won with Pardilla, Lopez and Pirazzi winning their pairings to land a 6/4 treble. 

Stage 7 - Epsom to Guildford

I've been looking forward to this stage for weeks now, they are going to be on my training roads! These lanes are the regular haunts of the Kingston Wheelers Sunday club run and I have suffered on many of the hills they are going up tomorrow. Crocknorth, Leith Hill, Coldharbour Lane, Barhatch - they all have had their share of expletives as I battled up them. There are plenty of twisty ups and downs as they circulate the North Downs as you can see from the profile below, but nothing too challenging for the last 100km or so, but it is sure to be fast and frantic.  

Crocknorth is a nice climb, short but steep but shouldn't be a problem to the majority of these guys. It starts off easy enough, but then you turn a bend and it rises up in front of you - the gradient hits 15-20% here, for an average of 9.4% for the 700m. Coldharbour Lane is a Cat 1 climb and is much more nasty - it averages only 4.1% for the 3.1 kilometres but the sting is in the tail where it averages 10% for the last kilometer with parts hitting 16-18%.

From there they head down towards Ewhurst and Shere and start up Barhatch Lane - I have only done this once and I don't really feel like going back and doing it any time soon, it is horrible! It drags along at the bottom for 2km, luring some in to early attacks, then it kicks up hard - the last km is 10.9% average with lots of it in the 15-20% area. They went over it last year too and Marc de Maar hold the KOM on strava followed by Wouter Sybrandy (before he smashed himself to bits on the descent - good to see him back riding again!) The crowds will be immense, watch out for me and my boy, he wants to go dressed as Iron Man!

They climb up over Newlands Corner then, which although isn't categorised, it will hurt at that point in the day. It is a wide road with a steady gradient but it should stay together coming up this. The descent down off of it is fantastically fast, I hit 74kmph and did the 1.4km at an average speed of 54.6kmph in April! It is fun..   

The rest of the stage is up and down smaller hills as they head back towards Chertsey, back down to the North Downs for a loop and finish on the cobbled uphill sprint in Guildford like last year. 

Contenders and Favourites

As far as the bookies are concerned there is only one winner tomorrow - Cavendish is a ridiculously short Evens best price to win the stage. I didn't think he would win on the cobbles last year but did he ever - he destroyed the rest of them to record a very popular win. I would love to lay him at that price, but I think he probably will win it again but his price is too short to back him! I'll neither a backer nor a layer be tomorrow I think, the only thing that I might get involved in would be to lay him to place at very short odds, I think he either wins it or comes well down. If I can lay him at 1/2 or shorter I will I think.

Who else can challenge him if (and it probably will) it comes down to a sprint finish? Viviani and Ciolek are both around 4 or 5/1 and I would rather be on Ciolek out of those two I think, but I would like to see Viviani win it as I will be riding with him and the Cannondale squad on Monday with my boy and it would be good to ride with a stage winner!

Of far more interest to me is Sam Bennett at 33/1 with William Hill. I hope he stil has fire in his belly as this kind of finish will suit him perfectly too and his An Post CRC team can possibly set him up for another top placing (not that he needs help in setting up a victory, I loved the way he nudged Wiggins out the way to get a good wheel with about 500m to go!). The only worry would be that he either has switched off mentally as it is 'job done, recover for the worlds' or fatigue might be starting to set in. He came in in the sprinters grupetto today about 7mins down so I think he was saving himself. 

It will be good to see the IG Sigma Sports guys out on the course too, these are training roads for some of them also. I met a bunch of them at the IG SIgma team launch a few weeks back and they were all looking forward to this stage, especially Sybrandy and Pete 'the hawk' Hawkins.. Good, fun guys too, lots of banter in the team. 

Match bets of interest - Ciolek over Modolo at 3/5, Bennett over Doull at 3/5 and Elmiger over Golas at 3/5. A treble pays 3/1.