However, dozens of riders were slowed up by the crash and found themselves desperately trying to chase down a reduced peloton charging towards the finish line at Pau on another sweltering day in the southwest of France.<\/p>\n
Sprinters such as Jasper Philipsen lost key lead-out teammates like Mathieu van der Poel and it led to a disorganised run to the finish line with no teams able to tee up their fast men as they would have wanted to.<\/p>\n
Co-captain of the Decathlon team alongside Paul Seixas, Kooij emerged from the chaos with an irresistible surge to the line to accomplish his pre-tour aim to \u201cwin at least one sprint stage\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite an easy day until the final, so then you know it will be hectic in this first sprint of the Tour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone is still really eager and I just managed to find my way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did it on my own in the end and I found the right wheel and I just wanted to have a chance to sprint today.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I saw the line I just went as hard as I could.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dutchman had never ridden at the Tour before as his previous team, Visma-Lease a Bike, did not bring a sprinter to the race as they concentrated solely on their overall contender Jonas Vingegaard.<\/p>\n
And he got off to a poor start with new team Decathlon CMA CGM as he battled a long illness at the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n
Lone breakaway<\/p>\n
Traeen managed to finish in a group 14 seconds behind the winner, alongside reigning champion Tadej Pogacar and other overall contenders such as Vingegaard, Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel and French teenage sensation Seixas.<\/p>\n
He was helped by Dane Vingegaard\u2019s Visma team motoring on after the crash to try to ensure their team leader, who is a two-time Tour winner, did not lose any vital seconds to his main rivals.<\/p>\n
The Norwegian still leads the Tour by 28sec from American Sean Quinn, with Czech Mathias Vacek third at 3min 50sec.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be honest, I don\u2019t know that much, suddenly I was on the ground,\u201d said Traeen about his crash.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to a corner and then I was there [on the ground], and then luckily I had the Visma train coming past and brought us back to the group.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he had \u201ca small wound on my knee but nothing really serious\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was a fairly typical sprint stage until the finale, with a doomed breakaway easily chased down before the business end.<\/p>\n
Baptiste Veistroffer said before the stage began that he was determined to get away in a break and sure enough, he was true to his word.<\/p>\n
From the chequered flag, he shot off down the road, but perhaps to his surprise, no one else joined him.<\/p>\n
It meant that the Frenchman spent 144km out alone at the front of the race before the sprinters\u2019 teams reeled him in with 14km left to ride.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoyed it a huge amount, I was smiling the whole day,\u201d said Veistroffer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe encouragement, the fans on the Tour are something that you really have to honour.\u201d<\/p>\n
After that it was over to the sprinters\u2019 teams, but they were unable to control the run-in.<\/p>\n
\u2013 AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, dozens of riders were slowed up by the crash and found themselves desperately trying to chase down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[104738,3549,24828,177301,32428,55893,18984,1221,71,3012,78,256656,15220,111,139,69,256655,6507,58758,13109,8214,213,87086,5433,4412,208,5977,6202],"class_list":["post-516817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-chaotic","tag-crash","tag-de","tag-debutant","tag-dutch","tag-fifth","tag-finish","tag-france","tag-from","tag-hopes","tag-in","tag-kooij","tag-line","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-olav","tag-overnight","tag-scuppered","tag-several","tag-sparked","tag-sports","tag-sprint","tag-stage","tag-teams","tag-tour","tag-which","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}