The 190.5-kilometer stage seven at the Tour de France was a classic sprint stage, and when the day’s escape was finally steamrolled after the peloton played them like a yo-yo for most of the race, the sprinters began champing at the bit.  

In the dynamic sprint finale, Mark Cavendish finally ended André Greipel’s reign of firsts and blasted to the win.  All of Trek Factory Racing arrived safely with a complete peloton after a day, finally, with no major incident.

Although from a spectator’s view the day appeared calm, collected and easy, it was a deceitful picture, explained Trek Factory Racing’s general manager Luca Guercilena.

“When you see the group quite compact with fast speeds it means that the stress in the peloton is very high,” Guercilena said. “But today we all made it in safely, so it’s fine like this.”

Trek Factory Racing had a welcomed unassuming day; the major goal was to stay safe and try as best as possible to recharge the batteries after a string of very stressful days.

“Because we don’t have a sprinter these kind of stages are for sure ones where we try to recover our energies a bit and keep our climbers safe for the mountain stages,”continued Guercilena. “Nothing special happened for us, we just needed to keep safe and that was the most important thing for today. Tomorrow is a tough stage so we will need to be ready again tomorrow.”

With the peloton arriving as one large group there were no changes to the overall classification with the exception of Team Sky’s Chris Froome assuming the yellow jersey after Tony Martin’s (Etixx- Quick Step) broken collarbone Thursday and his subsequent non-start Friday. Bauke Mollema also moved ahead one spot into 11th place.