Demare wins stage 2 at La Méditerranéenne

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Arnaud Demare (FDJ) won the second stage at La Méditerranéenne from a bunch sprint in Port Vendres on Friday. He stormed to the finish line ahead of teammate Mickael Delage and AG2r La Mondiale's Jan Bakelants.

FDJ won the opening team time trial on Thursday, making this their second consecutive win. Matthieu Ladagnous was the first of his FDJ team to cross the finish line during the team time trial and so was the first leader of the event, but Demare's sprint victory has now bumped him up into the overall lead.

Stage 2 of the four-day race offered the peloton a 157.6km route from Banyuls-sur-Mer to Port-Vendres. A two-man breakaway set off early in the race with Luca Sterbini (Bardiani CSF) and Yannick Mayer (Veranclassic - AGO). Their gap grew to five minutes at the 100km mark, and it hovered there for awhile, but then began to fall during the last half of the race.

The pair clung onto a two-minute lead with roughly 30km to go, but teams with strong sprinters set up for the bunch sprint in the closing kilometres and eventually put an end to the two-man move.

FDJ, already proven to be a strong unit in the team time trial, put together another display of superb teamwork bringing Demare and Delage to a one-two finish. 

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