Tour of Britain diaries | Stage 1 (ft Colin Sturgess, Rory Townsend, Jacob Scott, Andy Turner & Bob Donaldson)

Welcome to the first episode of Tour of Britain diaries. After each stage, we’ll be bringing you daily audio diaries from British Continental riders and staff, giving you unparalleled insight into the race from the perspective of the domestic teams. 

We have three regular diarists lined up:

·      Canyon dhb SunGod’s Rory Townsend, a previous podcast interviewee, one of the best domestic riders around and winner of the sprints jersey at the 2019 Tour of Britain.

·      British racing legend Colin Sturgess, DS at the Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling team. Colin was a world champion on the track and a national champion on the road. And was DS for Madison Genesis at the Tour of Britain back in 2018.

·      Andy Turner, who rides for the SwiftCarbon Pro Cycling team. Andy is a Tour of Britain debutant, so he will be coming into the race wide-eyed.

We’ll also be grabbing ad hoc dispatches from elsewhere in the peloton. And, in today’s episode, these come from breakaway hero Jacob Scott of the Canyon dhb SunGod team, and 19-year-old Great Britain rider Bob Donaldson, an impressive 11th on today’s stage. 

Stage summary

The break of the day featured Jacob Scott of Canyon dhb SunGod, along with fellow Brits Max Walker of TRINITY Racing and Oliver Stockwell from the Great Britain national team. They were joined by South Africa’s Nic Dlamini from Team Qhubeka NextHash and US National champion Joey Rosskopf of Rally Cycling.

Scott was the most successful of the five, coming home with both the ŠKODA King of the Mountains jersey – a jersey he won outright in the 2019 edition of the race - and the red Eisberg Sprints jersey.

They were all eventually swept up on the run-in to Bodmin where, perhaps inevitably, Wout van Aert sprinted to victory on the steep finish, with Nils Eekhoff (Team DSM), Gonzalo Serrano (Movistar) and home favourite Ethan Hayter (INEOS Grenadiers) following him in.

Just 2 seconds behind, our audio diarist Rory Townsend was the best domestic rider finishing a fine 5th. Bob Donaldson, 11th and James Shaw (Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling), 12th, also finished on the same time as Rory. Our other audio diarist Andy Turner attempted to get into the break early on but ultimately had to settle for a team role, coming home in 89th.