To almost no one's surprise, Svein Tuft (Symmetrics) won the fourth stage time trial at the Tour de Beauce on Friday, and grabbed the overall lead in the process.

What did raise eyebrows was the unexpectedly strong showing of Bernardo Cole Tepoz (Tecos Trek UAG), who had held the leader's jersey since winning the opening stage. The 24 year old Colex finished fourth, 58 seconds down on Tuft, and is only seven seconds behind in the general classification.

The 20 kilometer out-and-back course is deceptively hard, with an opening climb of over a kilometer, and then an undulating run out to the turnaround point - there is nowhere to rest or hide on this course.

After power riders Tuft, Glen Chadwick and Valeriy Kobzarenko (both Team Type 1) all finished within a minute of Colex on the previous mountain finish stage up Mont Megantic, it was assumed that the Mexican climber would be pushed off the podium.

Tuft did perform as expected - the former Beauce time trial podium finisher and three time national time trial champion covered the course in 25:45, 40 seconds ahead of Kobzarenko, with Australian Darren Lapthorne (Team Sparkasse) taking third at 55 seconds. However, Colex put in the time trial performance of his career to finish fourth, only 58 seconds behind Tuft.

"I knew warming up that it would be a good ride today, but to do this effort at yesterday ..." commented Tuft. "I'm just happy with how it turned out. But Colex had a really good ride, an awesome performance for him that nobody expected."

This leaves Tuft with a tenuous lead over young climber, and with three Team Type 1 riders - Kobzarenko, Moises Aldape and Chadwick all within 1:05 of his lead. This, with two tough circuit races still to come.

"The tricky part is going to be keeping it [the yellow jersey]," agreed Tuft. "These are two brutal courses still to come. The one good thing is that we've raced these courses so much, that we know how to ride. We know it is a matter of letting a move go that has the right mx and then control it. But we are going to have to be smart here, for sure."