With neither Matthew Goss nor Michael Matthews on the roster, Orica-GreenEDGE don't have a sprinter in this year's Tour de France. Hence, the team deliberately took it easy in today's stage and recovered from yesterday's great performance on the cobbles.

After an aggressive stage yesterday, it was a quieter day for ORICA-GreenEDGE on stage six of the Tour de France, with Mathew Hayman the first to cross the line in 25th position.

Cross winds and a technical final ten kilometers, including nine roundabouts, caused several splits in the peloton as a diminished brunch sprint, including Hayman, saw André Greipel (LTB) prevail.

“Today was very much in contrast to yesterday for us,” sport director Matt White said.

“It was certainly the strategy to stay quiet. We haven’t got a sprinter for the pan flat sprinter stages.”

With the conditions unfavourable, it was another brutal day on the road with several high-speed crashes. Aside from a very light touchdown by Hayman, the team remained out of trouble.

“Today was a cross tail wind which is the most dangerous wind,” White said.

“The stage stayed fast all day.  After yesterday’s nervous day, the nerves continued which caused a lot of accidents and the accidents happened at high speeds.

“There has been a lot of teams who have had some pretty bad luck in the last couple of days.

“It has been a stressful first week for everybody involved.”

Tomorrow tje Tour travels from Épernay to Nancy for stage seven, the longest stage to date at 234.5km. The reasonably flat journey features two category four climbs in the final 20kms.