Frenchman Arnaud Démare powered to victory in today's stage 4 of the Tour de France 2017 that concluded in Vittel. The Team FDJ rider delivered a performance so powerful that he managed to render all other sprinters useless in today's concluding meters.

Peter Sagan, however, used violence to fend off Mark Cavendish (Team Dimension Data), who was accelerating past him in the finishing one hundred meters of the stage. Sagan was later expelled from this year's Tour de France for using his elbow to push Cavendish into the race barriers, thereby causing a dangerous high-velocity crash for Cavendish who even brought down John Degenkolb (Team Trek-Segafredo) with him.

World Champion Sagan and his Bora-Hansgrohe Team later appealed the race jury's decision to expel Sagan from the Tour and used various arguments in an attempt to justify Sagan's aggressive behavior.

The corrected result of today's stage lists Démare as stage winner, Kristoff in second place, and German National Champion André Greipel in third. Démare's French nemesis Nacer Bouhanni finished fourth and is showing improving form.

Team Sky Pro Cycling's Geraint Thomas also crashed. The crash fortunately occurred within the final three kilometers so Thomas retained the yellow jersey for the fourth consecutive day ahead of tomorrow's first exciting summit finish of the 2017 Tour de France at La Planche des belles filles.

Stage 5 is a 160.5 kilometer mountainous ride between Vittel and La Planche des belles filles. In addition to the battle between the general classification favorites of competing teams, be sure to watch out for the internal power battles between Team Sky's Geraint Thomas and defending Tour Champion Chris Froome - and Team Astana's strong duo Fabio Aru and Jakob Fuglsang.