The on-board Velon footage from yesterday's Tour de France captures an intense fight for position in the bunch on what was a crash-filled stage 3 in Brittany.
Another interesting feature of the on-board footage below is the amount of infrastructure now in place on these roads to improve road safety - from speed bumps to roadside wands; none of which the riders had to negotiate in previous eras.
Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers) crashed inside the opening 50km. While he was able to continue, Robert Gesink (Jumbo Visma) came down in the same incident and was unable to carry on in the race.
Later in the stage, with 9km to go, Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) crashed hard and it looked like he was only barely able to continue in the race. While he got back on his bike, he lost 55 seconds to most of his rivals and 1:21 to the front group, containing Richard Carapaz (Ineos Grenadiers).
Advertisement
Just after that crash, there was another bigger incident with 4km to go which split the bunch as many riders fell and those behind were held up. And then in the final sprint, both Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) and Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe) crashed.
Related News
Ewan, who is now out of the race with a broken collarbone, said he thought he rubbed the wheel ahead of him and he crashed (below). However, the sweeping bend on the finishing "straight" did little to help the riders.
With narrow twisty roads in Brittany over the last few days and the usual nerves in the Tour bunch - especially in the opening stages - things have been tense. And that's really brought home in the first clip below.
Topics
