photo credits @ Le Tour
Arnaud Démare of team FDJ won a chaotic sprint to claim stage 4 of the Tour de France today, after beating from Peter Sagan following a sequence of crashes took down Mark Cavendish and substantially delayed Marcel Kittel.
The riders delayed by the crash were given the same time as Demare and so Thomas kept the leader’s yellow jersey. He will wear it during Wednesday’s 160km fifth stage to the mountain finish of La Planche des Belles Filles.
“It’s the sprint, I just didn’t know Mark was behind me … he’s coming from the right side and I wanted to take the wheel of – who was that – Démare or … Kristoff I think? I wanted to go on his wheel but Mark was coming really fast from the back and after I didn’t have time to react to go left, and and after he just came to me and after to the fence”, Sagan aid after the stage.
Asked if he apologized to Cavendish, he added, “Yeah for sure because it’s not nice to crash like that.”
Race Highlights
Wanty-Groupe Gobert’s Guillame Van Keirsbulck attacked from the outset of today’s stage, subsequently riding alone for most of the stage, and layer building up a massive gap of more than 13 minutes over the peloton.
However, Van Keirsbulck’s escape eventually came to end, after the Belgian rider was was reined in by the peloton with 17 kilometers remaining.
From there, the peloton remained intact, with each team moving their respective sprinters into place during the closing few hundred meters to contest the sprint.
Stage 4 Results
1 Arnaud Demare (Fra) FDJ 4:53:54 2 Peter Sagan (Svk) Bora-Hansgrohe 3 Alexander Kristoff (Nor) Katusha-Alpecin 4 André Greipel (Ger) Lotto Soudal 5 Nacer Bouhanni (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 6 Adrien Petit (Fra) Direct Energie 7 Jurgen Roelandts (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:00:07 8 Michael Matthews (Aus) Team Sunweb 9 Manuele Mori (Ita) UAE Team Emirates 0:00:10 10 Tiesj Benoot (Bel) Lotto SoudalGeneral
Classification after Stage 4
1 Geraint Thomas (GBr) Team Sky 14:54:25 2 Peter Sagan (Svk) Bora-Hansgrohe 0:00:07 3 Christopher Froome (GBr) Team Sky 0:00:12 4 Michael Matthews (Aus) Team Sunweb 5 Edvald Boasson Hagen (Nor) Dimension Data 0:00:16 6 Pierre Latour (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 0:00:25 7 Philippe Gilbert (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 0:00:30 8 Michal Kwiatkowski (Pol) Team Sky 0:00:32 9 Tim Wellens (Bel) Lotto Soudal 10 Arnaud Demare (Fra) FDJ 0:00:33
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