UCI boss takes umbrage Gaviria claims second stage win
SARZEAU: Tour de France debutant Fernando Gaviria claimed his second stage win when he outsprinted his rivals in the fourth stage, a 195km stretch from La Baule to Sarzeau.
The QuickStep Floors rider launched his sprint far from the line, and made sure of the win with a second burst of speed to beat world champion Peter Sagan and German Andre Greipel into second and third place respectively.
‘‘We wanted to wait to the last moment to launch but it was too hard. I’m really happy anyway,’’ Gaviria, a Colombian, said.
Belgian Greg van Avermaet retained the overall leader’s yellow jersey.
Sagan’s second place meant the Slovakian retained the green jersey for the points classification ahead of Gaviria.
‘‘He’s faster than me but it’s OK,’’ Sagan said candidly.
Hours before France played Belgium in the soccer World Cup semifinal, two Belgian and two French riders broke away but stood little chance, as the pace was controlled by the sprinters’ teams on a flat terrain featuring a 4km final strait.
The last of them, Belgium’s Guillaume van Keirsbulck, was reined in only 1km from the finish in the hometown of International Cycling Union president David Lappartient.
The Tour’s top guns enjoyed a quiet day in the saddle, with the exception of Russian Ilnur Zakarin, who was caught at the wrong end of a late pileup and lost 59 seconds. — Reuters SARZEAU: International cycling boss David Lappartient has accused Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford of insulting French people for saying he had a ‘‘French mayor mentality’’.
The Frenchman — himself a town mayor — was elected International Cycling Union (UCI) president last September and had to deal with Sky rider Chris Froome’s positive test for excessive levels of an asthma drug in last year’s Vuelta a Espana.
The Briton was cleared just before the start of this year’s Tour de France, but he has been jeered and booed since the race started on Saturday. Lappartient said the affair had damaged the image of cycling and that he would have preferred Froome to withdraw from racing while the case was investigated.
‘‘I gave him the benefit of the doubt when he started,’’ Brailsford said of Lappartient on Sunday. ‘‘I thought, ‘OK, he is new to the job, he obviously doesn’t quite understand the responsibilities of a presidential role’. I think he has still got the local French mayor kind of mentality.’’
The remark struck a chord as Lappartient has been the mayor of the Brittany town of Sarzeau, where the fourth stage of the tour ended, for 10 years.
‘‘When you have his [Brailsford’s] level of popularity, you’d do better to keep a low profile,’’ Lappartient said on Tuesday.
‘‘Who hosts the Tour de France stages? The French mayors. So it’s an insult to all the 35,000 French mayors and to French people in general.’’ — Reuters