Matthews back in the green jersey game as Kittel dropped

ROMANS-SUR-ISERE, France (Reuters) – Michael Matthews improved his chances of winning the points classification on the Tour de France, as the Australian claimed the 16th stage on Tuesday after his Sunweb team worked hard to keep green jersey holder Marcel Kittel out of contention.

Sunweb rode hard in the first climb of the day as German Kittel was dropped, making sure he would not come back, and they collected their third win in four stages after Matthews won stage 14 and Frenchman Warren Barguil prevailed on stage 13.

Matthews collected points in the intermediate sprint and at the finish to narrow the gap with Kittel to 29, setting up a duel with the Quick-Step Floors rider in the final days of the race.

“It had been the same guy every year for five years (Peter Sagan), now this is going to be exciting,” said Matthews, who outsprinted Norway’s Edvald Boasson Hagen and German John Degenkolb.

Degenkolb complained that Matthews did not hold his line in the sprint, but the Australian was adamant he raced fairly.

“I saw the sprint on TV afterwards. I sprinted in the same direction, I did not change my line. I left a space between me and the barrier,” Matthews said, adding that Degenkolb had grabbed him by the neck after the finish.

It was a bad day for QuickStep Floors as Ireland’s Dan Martin, who started the day in fifth place overall, lost 51 seconds after a late peloton split as crosswinds swept the roads in the Rhone valley.

Martin slipped to seventh, 2:03 behind race leader Chris Froome, who retained the yellow jersey after Team Sky’s brutal acceleration 14km from the line caused the decisive split in the peloton.

Overall, Froome leads Italian Fabio Aru by 18 seconds. “Everybody knew that the last 20 kilometers were in the wind and that’s where we decided to up the pace to make a selection,” said Froome.