Well, at least one thing is for certain - cycling is far from being a predictable sport! What looked like being a run-of-the-mill sprint stage, which Mark Cavendish was favourite to win, turned out to be a rather farcical affair! Of course, the race started off in the usual way. The peloton set off, a few riders got into a breakaway and the sprinters' teams set about bringing them back in order to set their sprinters up for the sprint. However, nobody expected that one of the team's buses would end up getting stuck at the finish line, having become jammed underneath the overhead barrier. It must have been embarrassing for race organisers to watch the Orica-Greenedge bus wedged in as the peloton hurtled ever closer towards the finish line.
It appears that panic set in, as the route was amended with under 10km left to go, so that the riders were unsure of what was going on. News filtered in via team radios, but still there was a degree of uncertainty about what was actually happening. The pace was picking up, as riders geared themselves up for the sprint, only for there to be a massive crash, which was seemingly caused by Andre Greipel, whose attempts to make his way closer to the front ended up with a number of riders on the floor. Tony Martin hit the ground hard, as did Alberto Contador and Peter Sagan. Indeed, a significant number of potential contenders for the green jersey were unable to contest the sprint, including Mark Cavendish, Peter Sagan and Andre Greipel.
Eventually the bus was freed and so organisers decided to tell riders that they would now have to ride to the original finish line, which surely added to the confusion and perhaps pre-empted the crash. So, with many of the major sprinters out of the sprint, it was left up to others who had managed to come away unscathed by the crash to contest it. In the end, it was Marcel Kittel who took the victory ahead of Alexander Kristoff and Danny van Poppel. He now has the privilege of wearing the yellow jersey in stage two of the Tour de France, although the terrain means that he may be unable to keep it for longer than a day. However, it would appear that anything can happen in bike racing!
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