Greipel takes second win on day of mayhem

WITH crashes taking down riders on rain-drenched roads, keeping team leaders safe was the order of the day on yesterday’s fifth stage of the Tour de France.

By the time Andre Greipel attacked in the last 100 meters to win his second stage of the Tour, and a third in five days for German riders, the last of the day’s seven crashes had taken down 30 riders.

There had been a big spill in stage three, too, involving some 20 riders. But once again, Chris Froome and the other Tour contenders avoided them.

“There was absolutely everything out there today. It rained, which made the roads slippery, and it was also windy,” said Ian Stannard, Froome’s Team Sky teammate. “That made for a stressful day.”

Peter Sagan, a Slovak rider seeking to win the green jersey as the Tour’s best sprinter for a fourth straight year, had even more reason to feel tired.

He spent most of the day protecting his Tinkoff-Saxo teammate Alberto Contador, and then contested the stage sprint, zooming ahead of British rider Mark Cavendish to take second place.

Three of his teammates were involved in crashes, but not Contador.

The yellow jersey group rolled over the line with no change to leading positions.

German rider Tony Martin, the winner on stage 4, still leads Froome by 12 seconds and Tejay Van Garderen, a promising American rider with strong climbing skills, by 25.

“Everyone thought today was going to be the relaxed day of the tour. But the wind and the rain made it anything but,” Van Garderen said. “Luckily, I have one of the strongest teams here.”

Among the main contenders, Froome leads twotime Tour champion Contador by 36 seconds; defending champion Vincenzo Nibali by 1:38 and Colombian rider Nairo Quintana, the 2013 runner-up, by 1:56.