Tour de France 2017: Peter Sagan disqualified from Tour de France after Mark Cavendish crash
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Updated 04/07/2017 at 17:21 GMT
Peter Sagan has been disqualified from the Tour de France after an incident that saw Mark Cavendish suffer a heavy fall in the spring finish of Stage 4.
Peter Sagan
Image credit: Getty Images
Sagan appeared to force the British rider into the barriers with his elbow as the pair jostled for a good line in the final few hundred metres of the stage to Vittel.
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'Cav's gone down!' - Cavendish suffers horrendous crash
And it was adjudged that the World Champion was indeed to blame for the incident.
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'I just didn't know that Cavendish was behind me' - Sagan
An initial punishment saw Sagan docked 30 seconds and relegated to 115th in the field. But, following an appeal by Team Dimension Data, a subsequent ruling saw the Slovakian thrown off the Tour.
Eurosport's Brian Smith was strong when asked for his opinion on the incident, describing it as a "lack of respect".
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'Sagan has made a huge mistake and it's not the first time' - Smith
And Smith predicted that the commissaires may take the decision that they ultimately did:
I don't want to see the World Champion thrown off the race. I don't think anybody would. I don't think Mark Cavendish would want that. It's a racing incident, but it was dangerous in the end. Everybody knows you don't flick that elbow out. As they were coming together Peter Sagan made a split (second) decision: 'This is mine. This is my wheel. I don't care what the consequences are'. He was fighting to get that stage win, and that's what they do, sprinters. And to flick that elbow on the end I think that's a little bit too much and that's classed as dangerous.
The news means that there will be a new winner of the Points Classification green jersey for the first time since 2011, with Sagan having won on each of the past five years.
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