The young German emerged victorious from a messy finale that featured butting heads and bodies to easily secure his first major professional win.
Just under two weeks ago in his first grand tour, the 22-year-old celebrated Tom Dumoulin's Giro d'Italia victory in Milan.
"At the Giro d'Italia, I came close to the podium twice," he explained.
"Now with the support of the team, I take the biggest win of my career so far."
“Today I felt I had good legs from the beginning of the stage so I was confident for the sprint. My legs were good enough to take them [Alexander Kristoff and Arnaud Démare] on. I'm super happy.”
The stage ended in a bunch sprint as expected after the final breakaway rider, Dylan van Baarle (Cannondale-Drapac) was caught within the last six kilometres.
A mighty fight for polka dots
Thomas De Gendt (Lotto Soudal) attacked from the gun eager to scoop up more points in the King of the Mountains (KOM) competition which he led overnight on 17 points to Koen Bouwman's (LottoNL-Jumbo) 14.
Although it came back together on the climb, the Belgian still crested the Côte de Belmont-d'Azergues first grabbing the maximum two points on offer, Bouwman nipping at his heels for the other point.
A group of six soon attacked, including Bouwman and Australian Simon Clarke (Cannondale-Drapac), the Dutchman looking to set something up for the next KOM points on offer.
Once this move was brought back, Bouwman then latched on to lone attacker Julien El Farès (Delko Marseille) with van Baarle and Marco Minnard (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) to form the break of the day.
By the category 4 Côte de Régnié-Durette climb at 50km raced, the leaders enjoyed a four minute an20-secondnd advantage over the peloton while Bouman hauled in the one KOM point. With 110km to go, the leaders tackled the Col du Fut d'Avenas with five minutes and 20 seconds up their sleeves.
Bouman took the maximum five points here and comfortably assumed KOM leadership.
To cement his lead he scored a point apiece atop the remaining three climbs after which the gap plummeted to just two minutes with 30 kilometres left to race. The KOM boxes all ticked, Bouman cracked and fell back to the bunch, El Farès and Minnard taken care of with 17km to go.
