Tour De France 2018: Daniel Martin Beats Pierre Latour in Sprint to Win Stage 6

Daniel Martin of UAE Team Emirates won Stage 6 of the Tour de France on Thursday, beating Pierre Latour of AG2R La Mondiale in a sprint finish.

Martin made his attack with 1.1 kilometres to go as the riders made their way from Brest to Mur-de-Bretagne and held off Latour by several metres to claim the stage.

The Tour's official Twitter account shared the results:

On Friday's Stage 7, the riders will travel 231 kilometres from Fougeres to Chartres.

Greg van Avermaet of BMC Racing Team retained the yellow jersey, but Team Sky's Geraint Thomas is close behind after he picked up two seconds from a bonus sprint at Saint-Mayeaux.

Here is the classification after Stage 6:

Five riders made an initial breakaway early on: Dion Smith, Anthony Turgis, Laurent Pichon, Damien Gaudin and Fabien Grellier, and it was the former who completed the first significant climb quickest to earn some points:

Behind them, the peloton split with 100 kilometres remaining, with Nairo Quintana and the Movistar team among those caught out. After some effort, though, the main group was reunited 25 kilometres later.

The leaders were caught by their colleagues inside the final 20 kilometres, as was Jack Bauer with four kilometres left after he broke away on his own.

Team Sunweb's Tom Dumoulin looked set to finish in a strong position, but a late puncture ensured he could only scramble to finish 51 seconds behind Martin, who timed his attack perfectly to cross the line ahead of Latour:

"I was a bit nervous because of the headwind, I didn't think it was going to happen," Martin said, per the Guardian's Simon Burnton. "I thought, why not have a try? So I did. The legs were just there, all the time. I don't know, maybe adrenaline. I felt good yesterday but didn't quite get an opening in the final. I was really relaxed all day, not confident but looking forward to having a crack, to having a good race on the last climb. Today I just attacked as hard as I could. It makes this Tour de France a success for us already, and anything else is a bonus."