For the second time in this year's Tour de France, Alexander Kristoff finished second in a sprint. His Katusha team regretted the late attack from Michal Kwiatkowski which had forced Alexander Porsev to launch his lead-out much earlier than planned.

Alexander Kristoff never gives up as he continues to challenge for a stage win in the 2014 Tour de France. Thursday’s stage six saw Kristoff right in the heart of the action, ramping up his powerful sprint to claim another second place finish in this first week of racing. Russian national champion Aleksandr Porsev and teammate Luca Paolini once again put Kristoff in a good position to contest the sprint.

"It was another day I was close to a victory," he said. "Everything went well and the team did a very good job. But I can admit Greipel did a stronger sprint than me. Maybe I could change the situation if I started my sprint from his wheel, but in that moment I had a small gap to him and I could only manage to finish second.

"Anyway this is another podium for me here. I will keep trying in the next days because I feel I am close."

André Greipel (Lotto Belisol) took the mass sprint victory just ahead of Alexander Kristoff. AG2R’s Samuel Dumoulin claimed the third spot on the stage.

"The team did everything possible today for Alex, and in the final we took the maximum we could," team director Dmitriy Konyshev said. "Maybe the late attack of Omega Pharma’s Michal Kwiatkowski in the final km changed the situation and Porsev had to start his work much earlier than was planned but it’s really impossible to say now.

"The bad news is we lost Egor Silin today. It was a bad crash for him and we understood immediately that there was no way for him to continue. We are really sorry about it. I hope Egor will have a quick recovery."

Stage 6 began in Arras and ended in the Champagne region of Reims at 194 km. The course followed some of the historic routes of the battles fought in World War 1 and today’s stage honored the 100-th anniversary of the event and the more than 13 million fallen. A group of four riders steered clear to make the break of the day, staying away on the rainy, windy stage that saw three riders forced to abandon, including Katusha’s Egor Silin who went down hard with 79 km to go and was out of the race.

Immediately after his crash Egor Silin was moved to the hospital of Reims to do a medical checking, but the prognosis of the doctors said Katusha’s rider has a left side collarbone fracture.

There was no change on the general classification after yesterday’s reshuffling from the cobbled stage and Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) remains in the yellow jersey after more than 24-hours of riding. His teammate Jakob Fuglsang is two seconds behind with Peter Sagan of Cannondale at 44-seconds rounding out the top three. Katusha’s Iurii Trofimov moved into 16th place on the GC at 2:25 behind the yellow jersey.

Tomorrow’s stage brings the peloton one day closer to the first true climbs on Saturday in the Vosges.  At 234,5 km, Friday’s stage 7 is one of the longest. It begins in Epernay and ends in Nancy with two category four climbs featured just before the end of the stage.