in 3'53" behind – enough back to end Mayo's hopes of a victory. With the time bonuses McEwen took over the yellow and green jerseys, the yellow for the first time in his career. Stage 4 7 July 2004 — Cambrai to Arras, (TTT) This 64.5 km stage was the team time trial, an event with some vociferous critics. This year, new rules were introduced for this stage to reduce the impact on the lighter-weight climbing teams. Under the new rules, the second place team would not receive a time penalty more than 20 seconds slower than the first place team for the purposes of the general classification. The third place team would not receive more than 30 seconds loss to that of the first, the fourth place 40 seconds, and so on to a maximum time deficit of three minutes. The course for the time trial had numerous gentle slopes, none of which merited a category. The day started dry but heavy rain quickly picked up. As expected, despite a slow start (5th after first time check), US Postal won the stage – putting Armstrong in yellow, filling six of the top seven overall places with his colleagues, and, remarkably, giving the top three places in the general classification to Americans (Armstrong, George Hincaple, and Floyd Landis). The results were good news for Armstrong, giving him a 36-second lead on Tyler Hamilton, a 55-second lead on Jan Ullrich, and, of course, giving him a yellow jersey, albeit one he was not expected to try to defend in the short term. Their only stress was dropping Benjamin Noval, who was shaken up from a crash yesterday – the same one that had brought down Mayo. Noval finished within the minimum time, however, and the Postal squad notably broke off their press interviews to congratulate him at the finish line. Hamilton's Phonak team also did extremely well, especially considering that by the time they reached the finish line mechanical problems had whittled them down to five riders – the minimum number to receive a time in the team time trial (although all of their riders eventually did finish). Phonak was also hampered by the unusual decision to have Hamilton slow down and wait for Santos González when he had some mechanical trouble. Despite this, they finished second, ahead of Illes Balears in third, and Ullrich's T-Mobile team in fourth. Fasso Bortolo