Andre Greipel benefited from an excellent lead-out in today's sixth stage of the Tour de France and powered clear of Peter Sagan, Marcel Kittel and Mark Cavendish to take his 5th ever stage win at the world's biggest race. Having been delivered perfectly by his team, he was full of praise of his famous train and happy to put the team back on track on the day where it lost GC rider Jurgen Van Den Broeck.

It's a common perception that the Lotto-Belisol lead-out train of Marcel Sieberg, Jurgen Roelandts and Greg Henderson that has delivered so much success for Andre Greipel, is the world's best. Yesterday they had, however, messed it up and failed to make the expected impression with Greipel having to settle for 4th.

To make things worse, the team's GC rider Jurgen Van Den Broeck crashed 200m from the finish and had to leave the race. Hence, it was a determined team that lined up at the start to get their race back on track.

They did exactly that as the lead-out train finally showed why nothing comes even close to matching it when it works perfectly. Adam Hansen took control with 1,5km to go and as they passed the flamme rouge, the train delivered their captain to his 5th ever Tour de France stage win.

Afterwards, Greipel was full of praise of his teammates.

"I'm of course very happy with this victory, that can be seen as a statement after yesterday's back luck," he said- "I've known for long we have a great team, but today's lead out to the sprint was fantastic. Lars Bak and Frederik Willems worked very hard during the race to keep us constantly in the front. The pace was set up by Adam Hansen, so we could go into the final km with three riders: Marcel Sieberg, Jürgen Roelandts and Greg Henderson. It's never easy to succeed a sprint, but today I was guided to the finish in a perfect way. Marc Sergeant (sports director, ed.) did a very good job this morning in the team bus. He said it was important to focus on today's sprint and we definately managed to do this."

Greipel also won the day's intermediate sprint and has moved into 2nd in the battle for the green jersey. He trails current leader Peter Sagan by 29 points but refuses to make the competition a goal at this point of the race.

The green jersey is not per se a goal, but I aim to take as much points as possible," he said. "It is too early to make concusions so we will see how it goes."

Greipel will get another chance to edge a bit closer to Sagan in tomorrow's hilly stage to Albi. It could very well finish in a sprint but to participate Greipel will have to survive numerous hard climbs.

Starting at 14.00, you can follow the stage on CyclingQuotes.com/live.