Station Des Rousses, France: Young Frenchman Lilian Calmejane took victory on the eighth stage on the Tour de France on Saturday after a solo break on the final climb.
Dutchman Robert Geesink was second while Chris Froome retained his overall lead after the group of favourites finished together 50 seconds behind the winner.
The 24-year-old Calmejane also claimed the polkadot king of the mountains jersey for his efforts on the tough 187.5km hilly stage from Dole to Station des Rousses.
A group of nine riders had made it to the bottom of the first category climb 24km from the finish but by the summit, 12km from the line, Calmejane was alone with only Geesink able to give chase.
Calmejane had a 30-second lead by then and he increased it on the plateau to the finish despite easing up at one point to stretch his legs due to cramp, to win by 37 sec.
The Team Sky-led peloton mopped up the remnants of the breakaway as Guillaume Martin took third at 50 sec.
But all the top challengers were in that group, meaning there was no change in the standings as Froome maintained his 12 sec lead over compatriot and Sky teammate Geraint Thomas and 24 sec to Italian Fabio Aru.
Australian Michael Matthews says the only way to tackle a Tour sprint finish is to “turn your brain off” and not worry about crashes.
Two of the three flat stages in the first six Tour stages featured crashes that saw the likes of reigning champion Chris Froome taken down and losing some skin to the unforgiving tarmac.
On Tuesday, there were two crashes in the final kilometre, with Briton Mark Cavendish knocked out of the Tour with a broken shoulder blade after being elbowed into the metal barriers by Peter Sagan, who was disqualified.
There have been a few near misses too, notably featuring French rivals Arnaud Demare and Nacer Bouhanni.
But Matthews says you have to simply flip up the blinkers, turn off your thoughts and just pedal as hard as possible.
“Stop thinking” he said when asked what a sprinter needs to do.
“You’ve got to turn your brain off and go for it, especially with what happened the other day with two crashes in the final.
“You can’t think that’s going to happen again, you’ve just got to switch off.”
Some have suggested that sprinters are getting wilder and taking more risks, but Matthews disagrees and insists it’s all just part of the job.
“It’s really hard to see on the TV how much risk people are taking,” said Matthews, who’s known as ‘Bling’ for his flashy taste and lifestyle.
“In the end it’s sprinting, it’s always going to be like this, it’s always been like this.
“If you want to be there you’ve got to take risk and I’ve got to do the same if I want to be up with these guys.”
The crash involving Cavendish and Sagan wasn’t the only high profile pile up in recent memory.
Cavendish crashed out of the 2014 Tour on the first stage in his native England in the sprint finish.
He broke his collarbone that time and brought down Australian Simon Gerrans, who also fractured his collarbone and had to quit the Tour.
Perhaps the most famous crash of all at the Tour was the sprint finish on the final stage at Paris’s Champs Elysees in 1991, when Uzbek Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, who was wearing the green sprinters’ points jersey he was sure to win if he crossed the finish line, clipped the barriers as he burrowed forwards, head down, and went flying spectacularly over his own handlebars.
