A spectator holding a homemade sign slightly out into the road has caused a huge crash in the bunch on stage 1 of the Tour de France today.
The road was completely blocked by the crash, which occurred when Tony Martin (Jumbo Visma) had nowhere to go and hit the spectator and the sign she was holding up.
The fan was not looking at the riders at the time and was instead looking ahead at the TV motorbike as it passed, in an apparent effort to get on the TV, meaning Tony Martin hit her back.
The woman had one foot on the road and was holding a large sign which was nudged into the riders' paths as they were very closely packed across the full width of the road.
Tony Martin's team leader, and one of the favourites for the final yellow jersey this year, Primoz Roglic was among the very many fallers, as was Wout van Aert and many of the Movistar team, among others.
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While most of the fallers were back on their bikes after a fashion, some looked like they had come down very hard, including Marc Soler, one of the fancied GC riders for Movistar.
Jasha Sütterlin (Team DSM) is out of the race on stage 1 due to the crash. It will take some time to establish who the other badly injured riders are.
Follow-up:
Miguel Angel Lopez (Movistar), Jack Haig and Sonny Colbrelli (both Bahrain Victorious), Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) and Van Aert were all in a group chasing back on after the crash, with Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe) on his own in the cavalcade making his way back up to the bunch.
There was 45km to go in the stage at the time, with most of the early breakaway having already been caught. However, Ide Schelling (Bora-hansgrohe) had attacked the breakaway and was clear on his own at the time of the crash, well over one minute ahead of the peloton.
He had already taken maximum points at the intermediate sprint and also won the climbers' prime, making for a very successful day for him. Schelling's lead then shot out after the crash, as the riders in the bunch knocked off the pace to let everyone back on.
However, after a time Deceuninck-QuickStep and Alpecin-Fenix, who had both done most of the work all stage, were back on the front and chasing in a bid to catch Schelling. His lead was soon well under one minute and he was then caught by the peloton with 28km to go.
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