Tour de France: Blow for Bradley Wiggins as Kanstantsin Siutsou crashes out

Collisions punctuated the peloton on a 197-kilometre third stage from Orchies to Boulogne-sur-Mer won by Slovakia’s Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale), who also triumphed on Sunday’s first stage.

Wiggins (Team Sky) finished in 53rd place, almost one minute down after being caught in a crash less than 300 metres from the finish, but avoided the loss of time due to a rule regarding crashes in the final 3km. Michael Rogers and Chris Froome were among those to also benefit.

Wiggins remained second overall, seven seconds behind Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack-Nissan), who retains the race lead, but the Team Sky rider’s hopes of taking the yellow jersey suffered a blow when his squad was reduced to eight as Kanstantsin Siutsou crashed out with a broken left leg.

Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford said: “The first week of the Tour is inherently risky. It’s a question of staying upright. Bradley has done that again today. It’s like boxing. You take a punch, as long as you have still got gloves on and are fighting you can still knock the other bloke out.”

Team Sky sports director Sean Yates added: “[Siutsou] is a big loss. We have to deal with it. It will just impact on the workload of the other seven members of the team.” That includes world champion Mark Cavendish, the winner of stage two, who may yet be required to perform duties such as carrying water bottles.

Wiggins, who maintained a ten-second lead over defending champion Cadel Evans (BMC Racing), broke his collarbone during the first week of the 2011 Tour and the narrow roads of northern France again left Team Sky nervous. “One minute all is calm, the next all hell is let loose. It’s a little bit nerve-racking,” said Yates, who believes the general classification contenders will only emerge come the end of Monday’s ninth stage, the 41.5km individual time-trial to Besancon.

“The first test will be the time-trial,” Yates said. “Until then you can’t really tell. Obviously Cadel is up for it, he’ll fight for it and he’ll keep fighting. We’ll see in the time-trial.”

Evans was prominent in the finale and finished sixth on the stage after avoiding the late crash as Sagan showboated to victory. The 22-year-old, who on Sunday became the youngest Tour stage winner since Lance Armstrong in 1993, beat Edvald Boasson Hagen (Team Sky) by a clear margin.

Peter Velits (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), also a Slovak, was third, with Cancellara fourth, while Irishman Nicolas Roche (Ag2r La Mondiale) was seventh.

The dramatic finish was only half the story on a stage which featured six categorised climbs in the final 70km. With a five-man break up the road, the peloton was splintered by two crashes, with Siutsou becoming the first of 198 starters to abandon the Tour and Jose Joaquin Rojas (Movistar) following soon after with a broken collarbone.

After the remnants of the escape were swept up, Sylvain Chavanel (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) launched an audacious late attack on the descent of the penultimate climb. But the Frenchman ran out of steam on the run-in to the final ascent and the peloton, with BMC Racing to the fore, caught him.