Stage 4 in the 2017 Tour de France will likely be remembered as the day when world champion Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) was disqualified. The race jury believed Sagan caused a crash in the sprint that took down Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data). Earlier, another crash took out several riders.
One man emerged out of this chaos in Vittel with his arms up in the air, however, as French champion Arnaud Démare (FDJ) captured the first French bunch sprint victory since Jimmy Casper in 2006. The 25-year-old rider also claimed his first-ever stage win in a Grand Tour on Tuesday.
“Winning ahead of the biggest sprinters in the Tour de France is something I’ve been waiting for since a long time. We worked hard for it with the team, hard work from Marc Madiot and now it pays off. The cohesion in the team is perfect. We have fun on the bike,” Démare said in the mixed zone after the podium presentation.
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“Our strength this year is to adjust our team to the situation. We have strong riders who can swap roles. Right now, I’m thinking about how it would work if we had everyone in the job he’s supposed to do.”
Démare isn’t a new kid on the block, despite his young age. He’s a double French champion, winner of Milan-San Remo and the Vattenfall Cyclassics, stage winner in Paris-Nice, Dauphiné, Tour de Suisse and Eneco Tour, and the former U23 road race world champion. Still, this win was different.
“Two minutes after crossing the line it started sinking in," he said. "I was able to hide it behind my glasses. It’s a feeling I didn’t have at my other races. It’s extraordinary because at the Tour, it reaches the big crowd, not only the cycling fans. Winning at the Tour de France is quite something. The privilege is the bleu-blanc-rouge jersey. I don’t realize just yet what it means to lift the arms up while wearing this jersey.”
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