Snoo-zer. Aside from the final five seconds of the race, the most exciting part of Thursday's Stage 4 in the 2007 Amgen Tour of California was the scenery. Relatively undistinguished topography and the desire of most riders to save themselves for tomorrow's critical individual time trial turned yesterday's stage into little more than a placeholder in the week-long tour.

It was a day of defensive rest, with everybody working extra hard to do the least amount necessary to maintain the status quo and playing it as safe as possible while doing so.

There was some nominal bad weather to keep the racers on their toes, a lukewarm breakaway led by Hilton Clarke of the Navigators Insurance team, a minimal response from Discovery Channel and the peloton, and a rather pedestrian, if not historic, sprint finish capped by Paolo "the Cricket" Bettini's (Quick Step-Innergetic) technically brilliant track throw to nip Gerald Coilek (T-Mobile) at the tape. Other than that, we loved it, thanks for asking.

Pretty much a ho-hum day at the office for the peloton in Stage 4. Hey, is that Slipstream rider in the second row checking out SFist on his Blackberry?. Photo by Mark Shimahara.

No doubt that the star of the day was California. Following Highway 1 south for 213 kilometers from Seaside to San Luis Obispo (SLO), Stage 4 passed by quintessential California icons Bixby Creek Bridge, Hearst Castle, and Morro Rock. After the brief squall north of Big Sur about 25 to 30 kilometers into the stage, racers were treated to intermittent sunshine and blue skies for the rest of the day. Kolley-phone-ya!

Other than Clarke's seven-man breakaway and the final 500 meters of the sprint finish, the entire 127-man peloton rode en masse for nearly every kilometer of the race. It was exactly the kind of stage that non-fans think of when they think of cycling: a bunch of guys riding in a huge group that doesn't ever seem to do anything except pedal at the same speed for five hours. Gripping, gripping stuff for the uninitiated.

One bright spot on the day was the jousting between King of the Mountain (KOM) aspirant Christophe Laurent (Credit Agricole) and Slipstream's Lucas Euser for the day's KOM points. Like teammate William Frischkorn before him, Euser's job today was to take as many points away from Laurent as possible to help teammate Thomas Peterson's KOM chances. In their two-man battle, Laurent nabbed two of the KOM sprints, while SLO-boy Euser picked up one. Peterson was MIA again today, while Laurent picked up enough points to don the "sunshine" jersey as the overall KOM points leader.

Race leader Levi Leipheimer went into a prevent defense for most of the day, content to save his energy and avoid trouble by hiding out in the shadow of Georgie Hincapie and the Blue Train of Discovery Channel. It was the smart thing to do, especially because Levi lost last year's Tour of California when he cracked on the individual time trial in Stage 3 and gave up 1:15 and the tour to eventual winner Floyd Landis. For Leipheimer, Stage 4 couldn't get over fast enough.

At one point, Clarke actually took over the "virtual" gold jersey, but his breakaway never managed more than a four-minute lead. Discovery Channel was never really worried, and did just enough to reel in the breakaway and ensure Leipheimer kept the gold leader's jersey. While Discovery did most of the early pacemaking, in the closing kilometers coming into SLO, it was the Rabbobank and Liquigas teams coming to the fore. Discovery was fine with that because it allowed them to rest knowing that those teams were going to keep the pace high in hopes of carrying their sprinters to victory. Even Stage 3 winner Jens Voight (CSC) took an impressive pull at the front thinking that maybe his boy JJ Haedo (CSC) might be able to nab another stage victory.

Greg Henderson (T-Mobile) looked like he might avenge his 4-cm defeat to Graeme Brown (Rabbobank) in Stage 1, but wilted in the stretch. Bobble-headed Coilek seemed to have the stage won with 50 meters to go, but the reigning World Road Champion and Olympic road race gold medalist Bettini proved just too crafty. Riding Coilek's slipstream right up to the very last possible moment, Bettini came around with less than 25 meters to go and literally threw his front wheel across the line for the photo-finish victory. A fast end to a slow day.

Not helping the somnambulistic action of the stage was the absolutely stinky Versus coverage. We were genuinely impressed with Versus the first three stages of this tour and wrote them up big time. Some of our readers, including Romulus and gttim disagreed, and now we're starting to see their points. Today there was way too much fluff and not enough cycling coverage. It seems that everyday the Versus coverage gets a little less focused on the actual pedaling. They were pulling the old: come back from commercial, 15 seconds of cycling, special interest piece on Amgen, back for another 20 seconds of cycling, commercial, repeat. Today, the scant pedaling coverage was over after just 49 minutes of the hour time slot, leaving the last 11 minutes mostly for commercials. Weak.

Flat-out, the Versus coverage needs to be longer. They need two solid hours replayed three or four times a day, just like they do for the Tour de France. Come one Versus, the bass fishing and bull riding shows can wait a week. Unfortunately, Versus is too chicken to commit the broadcast time because they are worried about viewership. Build it and they will come Versus. Give the coverage the time and the resources required to make it brilliant and you can be part of the mechanism that changes the status of pro cycling in the US.

For Leipheimer, today is the day. If he wants to win this tour and make his claim for leadership of the Discovery team over Ivan Basso heading into the Tour de France, he must do well in the time trial. It's as simple as that. The kid sure sounds ready though:

"I feel strong, I feel like I'm the best rider in the race." -- Levi

Stage 5 is a 23.4-km individual time trial through the charming Danish community of Solvang in the Santa Ynez Valley. We're talking wooden shoes, windmills, the whole Hans Christian Anderson thing. The Santa Ynez Valley is a favorite training spot for many professional teams, including Discovery Channel.