It was almost the perfect script: Ethan Vernon, on his 25th birthday, put himself in position to win stage 4 of La Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a in Voiron, France.<\/p>\n
Having been helped through the final stage of the race\u2019s visit away from its heartland, which today started in Susa, Italy, and then into France via the Alps, Vernon sprinted to fourth place in the shadows of the town\u2019s stunning 19th-century Basilica of Saint Bruno.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it was frustrating,\u201d he says. \u201cThe guys did a good job all day riding, and then a few things went wrong in the final, but yeah, it\u2019s racing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The British rider<\/a> started this year\u2019s race by finishing second in Saturday\u2019s opening stage<\/a>. <\/p>\n Following a technical and narrow approach to the finish line, Vernon positioned himself in the wheel of Jasper Philipsen, but was soon blocked in by the barriers on his left side. Compatriot Ben Turner (IGD) avoided such luck, sprinted to Philipsen\u2019s right, and took the victory. Nonetheless, fourth place marked Vernon\u2019s 12th top-10 finish in road races this season.<\/p>\n He adds: \u201cIt makes it more annoying knowing I had the legs. I know I\u2019m fast enough to win, and then when you don\u2019t, it\u2019s frustrating. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not like that\u2019s the best you can do. But there are a few more opportunities left, so we\u2019ll keep trying for those.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was almost the perfect script: Ethan Vernon, on his 25th birthday, put himself in position to win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-96207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}