Multiple grand tour stage winner Michael Matthews has sprinted to eighth place on stage 15 of the Tour de France.

On the stage that could have easily been gifted to a breakaway, instead saw a move of nine riders including ORICA-GreenEDGE’s Adam Yates chased down for the peloton to contest the Valence finish all together.

Lotto Soudal’s Andre Greipel took his third win of the Tour whilst Matthews battled in a messy sprint for the top ten result.

“Today was going to go one of two ways,” sport director Matt White said.

“There was a very big breakaway at the start of the day but there was too many dangerous guys in there, including Peter Sagan and a couple of general classification guys, and that was the downfall.

“It did splinter and Adam Yates made the select group but it was too small and there was too much tail wind for it to go to the line.

“Then we had Michael having a go in the final. He has been up and down during the Tour after his crash but it was a sprint stage and we needed to have a go. It’s good for his confidence that he has shown he is back and is on the mend.”

“There’s people doing crazy things in finals for no reason. It’s just making it unsafe for the rest of the riders. Using head and elbows and everything. It’s just not safe racing, really," Matthews said.

“Yeah, I definitely had a chance to win but when riders ride crazy like this it puts too much risk in the bunch sprints. When you’re trying to sprint at 70k an hour and someone head-butts yous that makes things quite dangerous.”

“I got into the first break and there was 27 riders and there wasn’t much co-operation, there was a lot of guys sitting on. Then there was a little climb and nine of us got away and we worked pretty good all day, everybody committed and it was a strong group of guys but the teams in the peloton weren’t happy with it so we got caught back," Yates said.

“The group wasn’t big enough, you need about 15 guys all working really well but that’s how it goes.”