Hammond, however, admitted he was furious post-stage, before Tweeting that the race jury could only make one decision – disqualify Sagan from the Tour.

Cavendish refused to initially pass judgement on the incident, stating that he wished to talk to Sagan about his use of the elbow before making comment, and reiterated that point upon learning of the world champion’s disqualification.

“I was massively grateful that Peter came directly after the finish to see me,” he told reporters. “With the movement to the right [during the sprint], obviously I wouldn’t be happy but that’s racing.

“But I was a little bit confused with the elbow. That’s something I’d like to speak to him about. I’m not angry, I’m a little confused. In terms of disqualification – that’s the jury’s decision.”

Causes a big crash at 1.5 to go, elbows elbows fellow competitor in the head 300 meters… can only result in one decision. #Goodbye pic.twitter.com/xeTB0llOPF

— Roger Hammond (@rog10) July 4, 2017

Aldag backed that view, telling reporters: “They are both sprinters, so they are hard guys, but I think the message we send out here is if the world champion can elbow his competitors off the bike at 65km/h… that’s pretty much life threatening so I don’t think we can accept that.”

Time to step up #UCI. This was not a race accident. Violence. Hard to DQ a world champion from #letour, but needs to be done.

— Rolf Aldag (@RolfAldag) July 4, 2017

He also took to Twitter after the stage, Tweeting for the first time since joining in April 2015 to say: “This was not a race accident. Violence. Hard to DQ a world champion from #letour, but needs to be done.”