Mark Cavendish has withdrawn from the Tour de France after he suffered a fractured shoulder blade in a horrendous crash 200 metres from the finish line on stage four. Cycling’s governing body quickly disqualified the world champion, Peter Sagan, for a dangerous move in the sprint finish in which he appeared to elbow the British Sabres Authentic Jersey rider to the floor.
Cavendish also sustained a heavy cut to his hand and was taken to hospital for x-rays to investigate injuries to the shoulder he damaged in a similar pile-up at the end of the first stage of the Tour in Harrogate in July 2014. In a chaotic finale, the yellow jersey holder, Geraint Thomas, also fell – but to no ill effect.
On Tuesday night it was confirmed that Cavendish’s Tour is over. “I’m obviously massively disappointed to get this news about the fracture,” he said. “I feel I was in a good position to win [the stage] and to lose that and even having to leave the Tour, a race I have built my whole career around, is really sad.”
Sagan’s Bora-Hansgrohe team announced they had officially protested about the Slovak’s expulsion. The German team http://www.authenticsabresprostore.... said Sagan “rejected [the claim] to have caused, or in any way intended to cause, the crash of Mark Cavendish”.
Sagan added: “In the sprint I didn’t know that Mark was behind me. When I was told after the finish that Mark had crashed, I went straight away to find out how he was doing. We are friends and colleagues in the peloton and crashes like that are never nice. I hope Mark recovers soon.”
In two crashes in the final kilometres involving about 20 riders, it was Cavendish who came off worst, being the first of three sprinters to hit the deck. He lay prone on the tarmac as the rest of the group passed and crossed the line several minutes after the stage winner, Arnaud Démare. Cavendish was holding his right shoulder, with his skin suit ripped from shoulder to waist, and with heavy [url=http://www.authenticsanjosesharks.com]San Jose Sharks Authentic Jersey bandaging on his right hand.
The Guardian understands he hit the road so hard he folded the spider and the chainring of his chainset so that they were pointing backwards. Sagan was one of several riders, including Cavendish, who launched their sprints in the wake of the Norwegian Alexandr Kristoff and were accelerating to full speed with around 250m to go. Cavendish was following Démare through a gap between Sagan and the crowd barriers when the Slovak moved to his right, making contact with the Manxman.
Philippe Marien, the head UCI commissaire [race official], said: “Before the Tour de France we warned the sprinters that we would look very closely at every sprint, that is what we did today. It was not an easy decision, but this is the beginning of the Tour and now is the moment to set our boundaries. And that is what we did today. It was not about Sagan, but about the act the rider [url=http://www.authenticsanjosesharks.com/authentic-brent-burns-jersey]http://w... made. What happens here, it looks like it was on purpose and it almost looks like hitting a person. It’s not about Cavendish and Sagan, it could be anybody, the names won’t matter.”
Better known as a sedate spa town and a still mineral water, Vittel does things when the Tour comes to visit. In 1968 this was the start town for a Tour de Santé, supposedly to relaunch the sport in the wake of Tom Simpson’s death, but which ended in two positive drug tests over the three weeks.
On Tuesday, what should have been a decorous celebration of 10 years in which Vittel has been the ‘eaufficiel’ du Tour, ended in Sagan’s disqualification.
This was a massive event, partly because of Sagan’s profile as the most popular rider in cycling, but also because this was the first time a world champion had been thrown off the race since Laurent Brochard was given his marching orders [img]http://www.authenticlosangeleskings.com/images/products/nhl_jerseys_new/los... during the Festina drug scandal of 1998. And it is rare indeed for the race’s referees to decide that any of the plethora of dodgy manoeuvres and dirty tricks that happen in sprints is sufficiently life-threatening to merit expulsion.
The last time such a thing happened was in 2010 when the mild-mannered Australian Mark Renshaw decided to use his head as well as his legs at Bourg les Valence, not once, but several times, while in 1997 the otherwise utterly genteel Belgian Tom Steels was sent home for bunging a bidon at a fellow fast man.