Sagan continues fight for BinckBank Tour victory

Image 1 of 5

Peter Sagan was unable to secure any bonus seconds in the stage 4 sprint of the Binck Bank Tour, but the World Champions remains in the hunt for the overall victory. Bora-Hansgrohe's serial winner remains tied with Giro d'Italia winner Tom Dumoulin on five seconds behind race leader Stefan Kung (BMC) in fourth place. Teammate Maciej Bodnar is second at four seconds to Kung.

With three crucial stages to come at the WorldTour stage race, Sagan has promised to keep fighting and try into regain the leader's jersey through aggressive racing.

"We had another fast, wet and hard stage at the BinckBank Tour," said of the stage won by Edward Theuns. "The team did an excellent job, pulling hard to bring back the breakaway, practically by themselves. As expected, it all came down to a fast bunch sprint, where I was fourth. The GC hasn't changed, we have Bodi in second place, myself tied with Dumoulin for third - all of us within 5 seconds - and three more stages where anything can happen. We'll keep fighting every day."

Despite being boxed in and being forced to settle for the fourth place, Sagan made a visit to the poidium to again collect the blue points jersey. He leads the classification, 79 points to Theuns' 55 and will be confident of securing the win. Sagan has also won the points classification at Tirreno-Adriatico, Tour of California, Tour de Suisse and the Tour de Pologne in 2017 but was denied at the Tour de France when he was disqualified from the race on stage 4.

With two riders sitting top five and well within touching distance of the win, sports director Jens Zemke explained Bora-Hansgrohe will be chasing the overall all the way to the line on stage 8.

"In this edition of the BinckBank Tour there are strong riders, and Peter took fourth place today, which is also a good result! We have Bodi in second place in the GC, Peter fourth and leader in the sprint classification," Zemke said. "I think this race plays out well for us and we look forward to the upcoming stages!"

With Sagan winning two of the four opening stages, Bora-Hansgrohe go into the second half of the race confident of at least matching Sagan's third place overall last year.