Greig Leach

Under normal circumstances, I never paint the crashes the plaque the Tour de France (and bike racing in general). But this one will affect the rest of this race. As the peloton ramped up to sprint of sprint points at the intermediate sprint in Isbergues, another sprinter bounced off of a lead out main on a third team. His loss of control took out the front wheel of Jasper Philipsen (Alepcin-Deceuninck) has he prepared to add to his lead in the race for the Maillot Vert while wearing the green skin suit. He went down hard onto his back. Since it was at high speed, he scraped off not only his kit but quite a bit of skin too. His teammate Gianni Veermeersch held his bike as he tried to help his sprinter. Another of his teammates, Silvan Dillier came back to be ready to help pace Philipsen back into the peloton. Alas, there was no remounting for the Belgium sprinter. It was clear that he had broken or dislocated his shoulder. I learned later that he also broke two ribs as well. So, in just the blink of an eye, his Tour was over.