Sam Bennett came down very hard in a nasty crash apparently caused by road furniture at the Tour of Qatar.
Sam Bennett has crashed in the final of today’s second stage of the Tour of Qatar, though he has escaped serious injury.
In what was a chaotic final few kilometres to the finish, Bennett looked perfectly poised to deliver a result as he had an army of teammates with him right towards the front of the fragmented field.
But when the bunch encountered a kerb which divided the road, some riders didn’t see it and a clutch of them went down – Bennett included.
It was a very ugly one but as it was a crosswind finish, perhaps it could have been even worse had the speed been even higher.
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Race leader Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) and eventual stage winner Alexander Kristoff (Katusha Cycling) escaped the carnage to contest the sprint which the latter won by a nose.
However, courtesy of his second place, Cavendish still clings to the race leader’s golden jersey by five seconds heading into tomorrow’s individual time trial stage with Sacha Modolo (Lampre-Merida) third at 14 seconds.
The race was another lively one with average speeds once again over the 50kph mark.
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Cavendish had reason to worry early on when he found himself on the wrong side of a split in the front group but thanks to the efforts of his team - including Matt Brammeier they rejoined the leaders, where Bennett stayed all day.
Still, the split did allow Kristoff win the first intermediate sprint.
The latter's Katusha team and Dimension Data teams controlled the peloton for much of the day while also conspicuouos by their presence were Bennett's Bora-Argon 18 men in numbers.
The wind made life extremely stressful and there was plenty jockeying for position in the high-speed run-in to the finish.
The crash took out a half dozen riders including young rider jersey wearer Søren Kragh Andersen (Giant-Alpecin) but it did not affect the overall classification.
Matt Brammeier avoided the spill and was right there with Cavendish in the final, though he was less than impressed with those final kilometres.
He took to twitter to voice his frustration at the lack of barriers in the finish.
Bennett is now 13th at 21 seconds while Brammeier is 37th at 2:04.
Tomorrow's stage is an 11-kilometre time-trial which starts and finishes in Lusail.
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