CAVENDISH CRASH HORROR

TOUR DE FRANCE

FOR Mark Cavendish it ended in carnage and the worry that his Tour de France might have come to a painfully premature conclusion. A broken heart as well as what was later confirmed to be a dislocated collarbone.

Desperate to win the opening stage in his mother’s home town, the British sprint specialist made what looked like a desperate manoeuvre that resulted in flesh colliding with tarmac. On the ground, Cavendish clutched his shoulder in agony, eventually climbing back on to his bike and rolling across the line more than three minutes later with only his left hand on his bars.

There were tears. There was the haunted expression of a man who certainly knew that the chance of wearing the yellow jersey for the first time in his career had gone for another year. That his great rival, the German Marcel Kittel, had taken the stage and the jersey instead.

Confusion surrounded the severity of Cavendish’s injury at first, with suggestions of ligament damage and then an official statement confirming the dislocation. Certainly the worry that the injury would stop him getting back on his bike today for the second stage in York.

There will be bruises to match the bruised ego.

The uphill finish into Harrogate’s Parliament Street proved more problematic than anyone had perhaps anticipated.

From more than 4km out Cavendish’s Omega Pharma-Quickstep team had attempted to control the peloton, but that control was lost when the road rose sharply and Fabian Cancellara attacked down the right and pulled clear.

By the time the bunch had chased down the Swiss time-triallist, some 200 or metres from the finish, the support Cavendish might have wanted from his team-mates had gone. Delivered to perfection by his own Giant-Shimano train, Kittel was suddenly ahead.

Cavendish knew at that moment that he had to respond but, boxed in, he leant against Simon Gerrans with his head in an effort to create a gap that simply wasn’t there. The presence of Europcar’s Bryan Coquard on the outside of Gerrans made it impossible and with nowhere for the Australian to go, there was only one outcome: riders down.

With Cavendish on his way to hospital for an X-ray, it was left to his team boss Patrick Lefevere to deliver the damning verdict. Cavendish, he said, was at fault, a victim of his own ambition.

‘Of course, he was very impatient,’ said Lefevere of Cavendish. ‘He wanted to win. He has already done this sprint 100 times in his head.

‘Of course there is disappointment. It’s his home tour, he was very focused, maybe too much focused. He was so sure to win that he probably did a mistake. Gerrans came next to him, slowed down, he wanted to get out and he pushed with the shoulder. Gerrans pushed back with the shoulder and, boom, they crashed.’

After losing 4-2 in stage wins to Kittel in last year’s Tour, Cavendish was keen to make amends. He had trained hard all winter for this, knowing that first blood with a victory on home soil, on the opening day, would give him a huge lift. But Kittel’s team did seem to have the edge. ‘The advantage for me was the team,’ said the powerfully-built young German. ‘If the crash hadn’t happened I’m sure Cavendish would have been there, so we got a bit lucky, too. But I did feel we were the strongest team.’

The fact that Chris Froome came home in sixth was a measure of just how tough a finish it was. A measure, too, of how good he must have been feeling after 190km on Yorkshire’s roads.

Yorkshire did look magnificent in the warm sun of a perfect summer’s afternoon. The steeper sections of the Dales, complete with their new French names, turning seemingly into classic Alpine climbs thanks to the two million spectators lining the roads.

‘The crowds were just incredible all day,’ said Sky’s Geraint Thomas.

‘My ears are ringing now; it was like being in a disco for four hours. It was so noisy. You couldn’t hear the radio, you had to shout to speak to each other.’

Team Sky had woken to the headlines created by Christophe Bassons, the anti-doping advocate and Lance Armstrong adversary, who had attacked the British team and Froome for what he considers a questionable attitude towards therapeutic use exemption certificates (TUEs).

Perhaps understandably, Sky were deeply offended by the French former rider’s comparison with Armstrong’s US Postal team. Such anger was being communicated by team officials, however, and not by Froome or his team-mates.

Indeed, Froome appeared happy and relaxed enough to sign a few autographs outside the team bus before rolling down to the Grand Depart in Leeds city centre.

The atmosphere was terrific, a crowd estimated by the police to be in the region of 230,000 seeing off the 198 riders as they embarked on their three-week, 3,664km journey.

After being seen off by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at the official start at Harewood House, Froome settled in towards the front of the peloton with his team-mates around him for protection.

Up front, a three-man breakaway formed, with 42-year-old Jens Voigt riding clear on a lone break that saw him five minutes clear of the main bunch going over the highest point on the stage, the 532m summit of the ‘Cote de Buttertubs’.

Having announced that this would be the last of his 17 Tours, Voigt decided it was time to have some fun. ‘Next year I might just come as a mascot,’ he said. By the time the riders had reached the summit of the Cote de Grinton Moor, a 3km climb rising at an average gradient of more the six per cent, Voight’s lead had been cut. The peloton would swallow him up and begin preparing for the finish.

The key for Froome was to stay out of trouble and he did just that. Today will be another testing stage with more climbing and it has come as a surprise to Sky that Alberto Contador — Froome main’s rival for the race — has not recced the stage between York and Sheffield.

On their return to the team bus Sky were treated to a message scrawled on the road. ‘Where’s Wiggo?’ it asked, someone clearly unhappy with the omission of Sir Bradley Wiggins from the team.

But Sky were satisfied, as team principal Sir Dave Brailsford said: ‘The first stage is about getting through unscathed; Froomey finished sixth. Job completed.’ Brailsford added that he had ‘never seen so many people in his life’.

A pity, then, that Cavendish could not deliver the finish Yorkshire craved.