Tour de France Stage Seven

Stage Seven:  Matteo Trentin puts an end to Peter Sagan's dream in Nancy

Matteo Trentin of Omega Pharma-Quick Step scored his second stage win at the Tour de France one year after taking the laurels in Lyon. He passed Peter Sagan in extremis on the line in Nancy. The green jersey wearer had done everything he could before with putting his Cannondale team at the front of the peloton all day. He attacked in the last climb and sprinted in a crash marred finale but had to accept another defeat.

Martin Elmiger (IAM) and Bartosz Huzarski (NetApp) were first attackers at km 6. They were rejoined at km 9 by Alexandre Pichot (Europcar), Matthew Busche (Trek), Nicolas Edet (Cofidis) and Anthony Delaplace (Bretagne-Séché Environnement) to form a six-man breakaway group that enjoyed a maximum lead of 4.20 at km 25. Sprinters' winning teams Giant-Shimano and Lotto-Belisol didn't feel very concerned due to the difficult finale that didn't favor German aces Marcel Kittel and André Greipel but Cannondale was prompt to take the responsibilities and set the pace of the peloton just over two minutes behind the breakaway riders for most of the race. It indicated Peter Sagan's high ambitions to claim his first stage victory after he spent six days compiling a lot of points for his third consecutive quest of the green jersey.

At km 40, Belkin's road captain Stef Clement crashed and immediately pulled out of the Tour de France. 120 kilometres further, another Dutchman called it a race: Danny van Poppel (Trek). No other sprinters' team than Cannondale came in help at the head of the peloton but GC contenders like Vincenzo Nibali, Alberto Contador and Alejandro Valverde showed up at the front in order to race safely.

Read more at www.letour.com/le-tour/2014