Arnaud Demare once again stamped his authority over the Tour de l’Eurometropole when he won for the second consecutive day and as a consequence he retains his overall lead. In the sprint, he beat defending champion Jens Debusschere of Lotto and Belkin’s Theo Bos.

The riders got underway for the second stage of the Tour de l’eurometropole today from Estainbourg to Nieuwport over 171km.

As the gun went off, there was a big fight to be in the break and many unsuccessful attacks went off the front. The most notable of which contained Mat Hayman (Orica) and Laurens De Vreese (Wanty), however, all of the groups went away and then were brought back until a group of 9 got away: Tiesj Benoot (Lotto-Belisol), Bert De Backer (Giant-Shimano), Michael Morkov (Tinkoff-Saxo), Martin Velits (Omega Pharma-Quick.Step), Pavel Kochetkov (Katusha), Romain Cardis (Europcar), Julien Fouchard (Cofidis), Thomas Spregers (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Sam Lennertz (Vastgoedservice-Golden Palace).

The peloton gave them 45 seconds before they decided the group was too large and they were slowly brought back with 117km to go. This fast start and continuous attacks had seen a number of victims as a result of crashes, most notably Garmin’s potential stage winner Tyler Farrar and Giant’s Bert de Backer.

As the group began to head towards the day’s first climb, a group of 5 slipped off the front and the peloton finally sat up and let them go. The men were Aleksejs Saramotins (IAM), Sander Cordeel (Vastgoedservice-Golden Palace), Willem Wauters (Veranda Willems), Thomas Wertz (Color Code-Biowanze) and Jonathan Dufrasne (Wallonie-Bruxelles).

Dufrasne beat Cordeel and Wauters to the top of the first climb, while Cordeeel got his revenge at the second climb, with Wertz taking third this time round. As they hit the third climb, they had 1”42 and Dufrasne took the initiative, beating Wauters and Saramotins at the third climb and Saramotins and Cordeel at the fourth. But Dufrasne failed to get enough points to take the Mountain Jersey from Tom Dernies (Wallonie Bruxelles).

With 98km to go, they had 2”10 and FDJ began to chase them down, hoping to set up a sprint for race leader Demare. OPQS and Giant-Shimano also helped with the pace as they also looked to bring things back for a sprint.

With just over 50km to go, the group had 1”21 but things went downhill quickly and with 45km to go, they were caught in time for the peloton to contest the intermediate sprints.

Lotto’s Van Genechten beat Katusha rider Porsev and Bos of Belkin to the first sprint and he then beat Theuns of Topsport and Breschel of Tinkoff-Saxo at the second.

Breschel wanted more seconds however and with 18km to go, he attacked off the front of the bunch. He held a decent advantage at a point but realizing his attempt was not going to work, he sat up and it was all together again by 15km to go.

Bos took the third sprint ahead of Van Genechten with Orica debutant Magnus Cort Nielsen in third.

Belkin and Trek came to the head of affairs as news broke of a big abandonment for Gerald Ciolek of MTN-Qhubeka. With a sprint inevitable, there was a high pace in the bunch and a massive crash was caused, taking down the man in second place in the GC, Cofidis rider Adrien Petit.

Lotto led under the flame rouge but Debusschere couldn’t hold off Demare, with Bos showing a strong final 50m to claim third on the day. The result keeps Demare in the lead heading into tomorrow’s stage, where a sprint again looks likely, although it will be an uphill one and will probably be the stage that decides the GC.

Demare has a gap of 12 seconds to Van Genechten and Bos while defending champion Debusschere is 4th at 14 seconds.