In fact, today with it's crashes and incidents one after the other, seemed to be the perfect summary of the first 9 days of the tour. A first week filled with crashes and top riders feeling the force of the French roads on their bikes and bodies, one which saw many top contenders lose all sight of the victory in Paris, has now come to a close with a magnificent day in the Massif Central.
Tomorrow is the first of 2 rest days and the peleton will sure be reeling from today's effort. A rest is certainly what they need.
The first crash of the day came early claiming Euskaltel-Euskadi's Amets Txurruka and Vacansolei's Wout Powels. The second came on the descent from the Cat 2 Pas de Peyrol claiming the tour chances of Alexandre Vinokourov (broken femur and elbow), Jurgen Van den Broeck (collerbone), Fredrik Williems (collerbone) and Dave Zabriske (wrist).
It was then 36km from the finish where in the highly effective breakaway group of Sandy Casar, Thomas Voeckler, Luis Leon Sanchez, Johnny Hoogerland and Juan Antonio Flecha where a French TV car attempted to overtake the group. Half way through the manoeuvre the car violently swerved into the group sending Hoogerland and Flecha careering into a barbed wire fence on the opposite side of the road. Amazingly however both survived and finished the stage within the cut off time, Hoogerland however suffered severe wounds to his lower legs...though regained the Polka Dot jersey and took the Combativity prize along with Flecha.
Leon Sanchez went on to take the stage, finishing ahead of the remaining breakaway riders of Voeckler and Casar. Gilbert took the first spot out of the dwindling peleton of favourites who came in some 5 minutes in arrears.
Tuesday sees the start of the "run to the Pyrenees" with the mayhem beginning on Thursday with the climb up to Luz-Ardiden.
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