Tour de France: Greipel wins the sprint in Amiens

After three days of distinctly Classics-flavoured racing, some semblance of normality was restored to the Tour de France on stage 5, where André Greipel emerged victorious from a bunch sprint over Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Mark Cavendish (Etixx-Quickstep).

It was still a windswept, crash-ridden stage from Arras to Amiens, with the peloton split in two in the crosswinds. Tony Martin, in the front group with most of the main overall favourites, maintained his overall lead thanks to the inevitable bunch gallop, where Greipel outpaced all his rivals for to take a second stage win in this year’s Tour, his eighth in total. 

In the face of a strong headwind, going early was always going to be perilous and Kristoff was first to launch, followed by Arnaud Démare (FDJ) and Cavendish, who had lost the wheel of lead-out man Mark Renshaw. Greipel timed it perfectly to come through for the win, with Sagan on his wheel taking second ahead of Cavendish.

"Marcel Sieberg and Lars Bak, they brought me to the front. Marcel Sieberg did the work of three and it was quite an amazing job," said Greipel, who also got the better of his rivals at the intermediate sprint to further consolidate his lead in the race for the green jersey. 

"Normally with 300m to go I would be finished but somehow I got out of it and managed to launch my sprint," he added.

There may have been no cobbles, climbs, or finishes in the sea on today’s menu but rain and 30kph winds on the twisting route made sure no one would enjoy straightforward day.

As the peloton crossed from the Pas de Calais department into the Somme, where pitched battles were fought during World War I, there were a string of fallen riders: Only 10 kilometres had passed when Nacer Bouhanni’s Tour de France came to an abrupt end. The French rider, along with four Cofidis teammates, was part of a pile-up and was taken away in an ambulance having aggravated the injuries he sustained at the French nationals championships.

Jack Bauer (Cannondale-Garmin) was also in that crash and later withdrew from the race, too, as countless others hit the deck on treacherously slippery surfaces. The already battle-weary Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) was served another dose of bad luck but recovered from his late crash to rejoin and avoid further time losses. Even a police motorbike went down, failing to overtake the front group and toppling into a grass verge.

As the roads twisted and turned, the wind changed direction and just over halfway through the stage a 90-degree right-hander turned a headwind into a crosswind. It was at that moment that the peloton split in two, with the front group containing 100 or so riders, including all the big general classification and sprint contenders.

There was a lull in hostilities thereafter, with both groups happy enough to trudge towards Amiens, whereupon the race burst to life in the wind-up to the sprint, and the second group shuffled home 14:15 later.

How it unfolded

As has been the trend in this year’s Tour so far, the break formed immediately from the first attack, with French duo Nicolas Edet (Cofidis) and Pierre-Luc Périchon (Bretagne-Séché Environnement) soon gaining two minutes.

Edet, though, decided to drop back but still hadn’t rejoined by the time Bouhanni had crashed out of the race behind. Everyone else in the pile-up got back on their bikes but the pace rose and soon there were more riders down. Firstly Greg van Avermaet (BMC) and a few Cannondale-Garmin riders crashed, with Jack Bauer later abandoning, then Bakue Mollema (Trek), Nicolas Roche (Sky) and André Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) went down.

Bryan Coquard crashed on his own and no sooner had he got back in the bunch than he was on the deck again, along with several others. The Frenchman stood still in the middle of the road with arms folded in a portrait of gloom.

There was an intermediate sprint at kilometer 89.5 in Rancourt, home of the largest cemetery of the Battle of the Somme, where Greipel, Degenkolb and then Cavendish took the points from second to fourth.

Perichon was caught with 96km to go and the peloton immediately split into three echelons after a small crash involving Michael Rogers, but the split was short-lived.

Then came the decisive crosswind and the peloton split in two. Wilco Kelderman (LottoNL-Jumbo), Richie Porte and Peter Kennaugh (Sky), and Ryder Hesjedal (Cannondale-Garmin), were the highes-profile names to be left behind and the gap proceeded to grow and grow.

The racing was calm from then on, with the exception of Pinot and others’ crash on a slippery stretch of road, as the general classification men were kept at the front and the sprinters’ teams came up to join then.

Yellow jersey Tony Martin, safely inside 3km, led round the 90-degree left-hander as Etixx wound things up, but Cavendish lost contact with Renshaw and was always on the back foot. Whereas Kristoff, Cavendish and Démare opened up early into the headwind, Greipel surged from behind to take the spoils.

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