Démare doubles up in Tour Poitou-Charentes

French champion Arnaud Démare went two for two at the Tour Poitou-Charentes, taking out the second stage bunch sprint ahead of Ivan Garcia (Bahrain McLaren) and Alexander Krieger (Alpecin-Fenix).

The win helped extend the Groupama-FDJ rider's lead to 12 seconds over Krieger with stage 1 escapee Silvan Dillier (AG2R La Mondiale) in third at 15 seconds.

The stage threatened to be blown apart in the crosswinds, but the splits failed to materialize. A breakaway with Alexis Gougeard (AG2R La Mondiale), Damien Gaudin (Total Direct Energie) and Laurens De Vreese (Astana) was hunted closely by the peloton and reeled in well in advance of the finish.

“There was a real risk of echelons, so we remained very attentive”, Démare said. “It got tense at times, but it never broke apart. There wasn’t a strong enough team. We wanted to save ourselves for the final, but there was not enough wind to make it hard either. In any case, Hugo and Kono made a big effort to get back on the break that included some big rouleurs.” 

The peloton finally put an end to the breakaway with over 10km to go and then Groupama-FDJ wound up the sprint.

“Today we really did a perfect lead-out train. It was a bit of a rough finish, so we took the lead with two kilometers to go with Benjamin and Miles, who did a big job. We passed the roundabouts in the first positions, very quickly, and we could even come out of them with a small gap behind Ramon. Then, Jacopo launched me into the last turn, at 300 meters. 

"We were 1-2 in the corner and there was already a small gap. I did my sprint and it was another victory at the end. It’s perfect."