Four Days of Demare in Liévin

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Arnaud Demare (FDJ) remains unbeaten through three stages at the 4 Jours de Dunkerque with a field sprint victory today in Liévin. Demare's teammate Geoffrey Soupe stamped FDJ's authority on the stage with a second place finish, followed by Ramon Sinkeldam (Team Argos-Shimano) in third place.

With the time bonuses factored in Demare remains in the leader's jersey with a 16-second lead on Sinkeldam while Kenny van Hummel holds third overall at 20 seconds.

Four riders formed the day's early break: Maxime Daniel (Sojasun), Hugo Houle (AG2R La Mondiale), Maxime Le Montagner (Roubaix Lille Metropole) and Jani Tewelde (MTN-Qhubeka).

The peloton faced two laps of a 23km circuit prior to the final run-in to the finish in Liévin and the pair of climbs on the loop, coupled with attacks from the peloton, created a dynamic endgame through to the closing kilometres.

On the first circuit the break shuffled as Blel Kadri (AG2R La Mondiale) and Julien Duval (Roubaix Lille Metropole) bridged to the front group while Tewelde and Le Montagner were dropped.

Kadri dropped his three breakaway companions on the first ascent of the Notre Dame de Lorette with 31km remaining and pushed on alone with a 1:30 lead on the peloton.

Various chase groups formed and re-formed in Kadri's wake, and while the Frenchman's lead dropped precipitously, he continued alone in the lead inside of 10km to go.

On the second and final ascent of the Notre Dame de Lorette José Gonçalves (La Pomme Marseille) jumped across the narrow gap to Kadri, but the AG2R La Mondiale Frenchman upped the tempo and dropped the Portuguese rider. Moments later, with 7.5km remaining, Jean-Pierre Drucker (Accent Jobs-Wanty) bridged to Kadri near the top of the climb and the duo would momentarily extend their tenuous lead while the peloton organised a chase.

With the final 5km slightly downhill, however, Kadri and Drucker faced a tough task to hold off a FDJ-led peloton, and with 3.5km to go the duo were absorbed by a hard-charging field. FDJ and MTN-Qhubeka kept the tempo high through to the finish where Demare once again proved the fastest in the field sprint finale.

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