Peter Sagan pipped Alexander Kristoff in a photo finish to win the 16th stage of the Tour de France on Monday.
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World champion Sagan took his third stage victory of this Tour by a tiny margin at the end of a 209km stage from Moirans-en-Montagne to Berne.
Cavendish has won four stages on this year’s Tour and is preparing to race on the track at the Olympics, where he will be competing in the omnium event.
This victory ensured this will go down as his best Tour yet, having also held the yellow jersey for three days during the first week.
The gaps are significant, but Quintana, a pure climber from Colombia, managed to gain time on Froome in the Alps past year.
Norway’s Kristoff (Katusha) celebrated after crossing the line, but it was Slovak Sagan (Tinkoff) who actually finished first after throwing his bike in a timely fashion, strengthening his grip on the green jersey for the points classification.
“I was just trying to stay out of trouble and get to the finish as good as possible”.
Froome got animated when he was asked about Sagan.
But while IAM Cycling’s Jarlinson Pantano won from the breakaway up the road, Sky shut down every attempt at attacking from the peloton without Froome needing to do any of the grunt work, keeping him one minute 47 seconds clear of Trek-Segafredo’s Bauke Mollema.
“They have a great team here, and I think for them it would be disappointing with a team like that and the budget they have if they didn’t win the Tour”.
“All in all, thankfully we can tick [the stage] off now and be grateful we have a rest day tomorrow and definitely soak that up and look forward to the Alps in next few days”.
“I feel more ready for the third week than I have been previously”, Froome said. “I think most people in the peloton are scared of him and his ability. With the two bumps in the finale, it s more for riders like Sagan or (Michael) Matthews”, said German Andre Greipel.
Mark Cavendish announces that he is withdrawing from this year’s Tour de France in order to focus on winning gold at the Rio Olympics.
The race resumes on Wednesday with four punishing stages of climbing in the Alps before Sunday’s mostly ceremonial finish in Paris.
Froome goes into Tuesday’s rest day in an enviable position as he seeks a third Tour crown, but disagreed with L’Equipe’s morning headline which claimed he was “Sans Rival” in this year’s Tour.
“I was just hanging on there”, said Cavendish. “It was a bit sketchy”.
However, Froome scuppered talk that he has all but won the Tour, saying: “I don’t agree”.
“I have attacked on descents, I have attacked in the crosswinds, and it’s quite hard to say, “Well, he’s descending faster than everyone else so something is wrong here”.
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“It’s not frustrating [to see Sky on the front all the time]”, he added.
