“And this year already I had crashed twice”.
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No wonder he struggled to believe that he finally won a Tour stage on Tuesday.
“Congratulations to Peter Sagan, he did a great race today”. “I thought maybe this race is not for me, and I’d focus on other races. But today my dreams came true”. “I just won a stage of the Tour de France after two really bad years in this race”.
Michael Matthews claimed his first stage win in the Tour de France, edging a thrilling six-way sprint over the final 250 metres.
Fellow Aussie Luke Durbridge and South African Daryl Impey sacrificed their own victory chances to allow the fast-finishing Matthews to burst to the line first at the end of the 184km trek from Andorra to Revel. He finished second, followed by Edvald Boasson Hagen.
Asked how he felt, the 31-year-old Briton said: “A bit more fresh after (Monday’s) rest day”.
It was Van Avermaet, victor of stage five, who made the first real move in the home stretch, before Matthews came through to get his wheel over the line first.
Briton Froome kept atop the overall standings, the defending champion coming home in the labouring peloton nearly 10 minutes after the stage victor. Froome’s main rival Nairo Quintana sits fourth, 23 seconds back.
“We have such a strong group of guys here”, Matthews said.
Also in the group contesting the finish were BMC Racing’s Greg Van Avermaet and Samuel Dumoulin of AG2R, as well as Matthews’ team mate, Daryl Impey. Matthews followed and easily passed Sagan to exact revenge after finishing runner-up to the Slovak in the world championships previous year. “The way we work as a team, whoever’s up on that day we give that rider 110 per cent”. Durbridge and Impey gave me everything to win today. “There are no words”.
The stage got off to a nervous start on the category-one climb to the Port d’Envalira, as riders were keen to win places in the day’s breakaway which took its final shape after about 60 kilometres. Sagan was in the thick of the action as the air started to thin out.
He was joined by Sagan, Vincenzo Nibali, and Matthews in the highly technical descent to the spa town of Ax-les-Thermes, made even more risky by the thick fog at the top.
Team Sky’s Chris Froome retains the overall lead following the 197km stage from Escaldes-Engordany.
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However, with 10km to go that group had been reduced to half a dozen, by which point the peloton was seven minutes back with no hope of catching the leaders.
