VALENCE: With most of the top sprinters out of the Tour de France after punishing mountain treks, world champion Peter Sagan claimed a third stage victory at the Tour de France on Friday, winning the relatively flat 169.5-km ride from Bourg d’Oisans by a whisker. Sprinters Fernando Gaviria of Colombia and Dylan Groenewegen of the Netherlands, winners of two stages each, abandoned the race during Thursday’s stage ending atop the iconic Alpe d’Huez, exhausted after an opening block of racing in extreme heat. Slovak Sagan, however, went through the first three mountain stages with relative ease and had enough gas in the tank for the final effort in Valence, where he outsprinted Norway’s Alexander Kristoff and Frenchman Arnaud Demare into second and third place respectively. Briton Geraint Thomas retained the overall leader’s yellow jersey after he and Team Sky team-mate Chris Froome were booed by the crowd before the start. The overall standings remained unchanged at the top with Thomas leading defending champion Froome by one minute 39 seconds and Dutchman Tom Dumoulin by 1:50. Ireland’s Dan Martin came home in the main bunch, moving up one spot overall to ninth position. The peloton set off from Bourg d’Oisans without Vincenzo Nibali after the 2014 champion withdrew from the race following a crash apparently caused by a spectator in the climb up to l’Alpe d’Huez. In yet another incident affecting the race, a flare was thrown into the peloton with under 20kms left, but no riders were injured. Published in Daily Times, July 21st 2018.