Kittel wins Tour de France Stage 4 in a sprint to Limoges

Now he is already proving he deserves recognition as a top sprinter with his string of top-ten finishes – comparable to French rider Bryan Coquard’s debut in 2014, when he made a nuisance of himself on all the sprint finishes.

Tinkoff’s Peter Sagan was third and subsequently maintains possession of the yellow jersey.

Ireland’s Dan Martin has slipped to 13th overall, 18 seconds behind the race leader.

Kittel, who wore the race leader’s yellow jersey in 2013 and 2014, joined the Etixx Quick Step team from Giant-Alpecin for this season, replacing the departing Mark Cavendish. I had to fight to come back. “The victory means a lot. The team had so much pressure in the last three days”, said Kittel.

“For me personally, it was a huge setback and a hard moment for me in my career”.

Last year Kittel was forced to pull out of the event due to a lack of fitness having won four stages in the previous 2 tours.

The stage took the peloton from the medieval town of Saumur to Limoges in central France on a 237.5-kilometer ride.

Sagan reclaimed the green jersey from Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) by just five points, after finishing third in the sprint behind Coquard.

“You have to get everything right, it’s not just you against one other person, but almost 200”.

The Champs-Elysees is the grandest stage in the world for sprinters, and McLay has every intention of making it that far even if expects to struggle over the mountains which lie in the way. “I am so happy to win again-I can’t believe it”.

“I suffered today, it was a really bad day but I was relieved to finish with the best”.

There will no doubt be a breakaway through the early ascensions before the main climbs, and if the right people with the right climbing pedigree can open up a sizable gap before the peak of Pas de Peyrol at least, then they could be in with a huge chance to take the stage.

A one man solo break away put the peleton into a six-hour stupor until the final few Kms where we saw the inevitable sprint finish.

Sagan has an eight-second lead over Julien Alaphilippe overall, with Alejandro Valverde in third place, 10 seconds back.

“It’s a bit too early to see a real GC (general classification) battle but it’s definitely somewhere where there will be time gaps”, said Froome, who won the first mountain stage at last year’s Tour. Katusha brought Alexander Kristoff to the front, passing the Lotto-Soudal train, and Kristoff was the first to start his sprint, with Greipel on his shoulder, but the big German faded.

“Maybe there’s a day when I don’t make the time cut or something happens, but I’m not going to voluntarily pull out”.

“Those guys are going to be the favourites tomorrow”.