Peter Sagan spent the first week of the Tour de France as the nearly man following three second-place finishes in the opening six stages, but yesterday he finally seized a central role as the Slovak took victory in the 205.5km race from Montpellier.
It was a result which owed much to the determined effort of his Cannondale team than to his own gritty efforts to pull away from his rivals.
His team set a furious pace to leave his green jersey rivals trailing and Mark Cavendish soon became one of several sprinters – Thursday's winner Andre Greipel, Marcel Kittel and Matt Goss were others – dropped behind on the second of four climbs along the route, before giving up the chase in the final 50km.
The race will now head towards the Pyrenees and yesterday's four cate-gorised climbs favoured Sagan, since he has shown a superior all-round ability compared to the other sprinters. Yet it was the manner and the extent to which they were left behind which delivered the clearest message from Cannondale that Sagan intends to defend the green jersey he won last year.
"This was a show of how strong we are as a team," said Sagan, who equated his team's efforts with a 160km lead-out train. "All of our riders were committed to one thing and everyone trusts me now; they are prepared to work hard for me because they know that I want to do well."
John Degenkolb was more resis-tant to Sagan's efforts to pull away, but even he was comfortably beaten in second, followed by Team Saxo-Tinkoff's Daniele Bennati. With his main rivals left down the road, Sagan took both the intermediate sprint and the win to foster a formidable gap in the points classification, in which he has 224 points to Greipel's 130, with Cavendish on 119.
Cannondale initially appeared to sit up after the intermediate sprint potentially giving the likes of Cavendish the chance to get back, but the respite did not last long. "I thought maybe another team would take over and lead through to the finish," Sagan said. "My team-mates didn't understand why. They came to me and said, 'But we can continue to ride. Why should we sit up now and wait for the sprinters?' And they went back to the front and worked very, very well."
Cavendish ended Thursday's stage in a foul mood having crashed late on and only managing fourth place in the sprint finish, but he was more sanguine yesterday after crossing the line 14 min. 53sec. behind Sagan. "I was dropped on the climb and there was nothing I could do," he said. "But there are still a lot of sprint stages, like the Champs Elysees."
Daryl Impey, who had become the first African to wear the yellow jersey, will have it for at least one more day after finishing 12th, and he leads the general classification from Team Sky's Edvald Boasson Hagen by three seconds, with Chris Froome staying seventh. However, today's stage to Ax Three Domaines has the potential to change that significantly.
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