We obviously got the slowest conditions out of all of the tandems, easily worth 54 seconds.
Maybe not 54s, but Oliver/Cox must have missed the shower completely, so they probably gained a bit on us. On the other hand, Gaida/House probably had worse conditions than us, which may explain why they only took one second off us on the return leg.
I thought they said they were mashing it in the last couple of miles, I got the impression that a downshift was required but not exercised. Anyway, we can snootily disregard any complaints from other crews about their gearing :-)
Maybe not 54s, but Oliver/Cox must have missed the shower completely, so they probably gained a bit on us. On the other hand, Gaida/House probably had worse conditions than us, which may explain why they only took one second off us on the return leg.