I was starting to wonder if this stage was going to have any finishers. It turned into a crash-up derby. The early season and the crosswinds shredded the peloton and caused several kits to be torn and new road rash to be formed. I've seen cleaner Cat IV races, of course we were riding one tenth as far and about half as fast.
Bouet (AG2R) and Gallopin (Cofidis) attacked before the morning coffee even had time to settle. They were joined with Offredo (FDJ) and the trio racked up a 6:15 gap before Sky punched the clock and went to work. Sky did some damage but the peloton came back together and then Vacansoleil kept tempo for their young leader in Yellow, De Gendt.
All the crashes and we even had a train crossing that caused the bunch to catch the escapees, but they were given their time by the race director who set their gap at 45sec. With just a little more than 30k to go the rogues were caught and more crashes. Seriously it would be easier to list the riders not involved in a crash. Astana put some time in on the front to keep there man Vino out of trouble and to possibly launch an attack. The group stayed together and the bunch sprint was a mess, there was no real evident lead out trains. Everyman for himself. There had to be some gun-shy riders in the field after all of the bodies and machines that had lined the roads and ditches during the day.
Sky put in a little work to get Henderson up to the front and he out kicked Goss (HTC) and amazingly Haussler (Garmin) was up there after his tumble into a ditch just a few K's before the line. Crazy Chaos.
1 Greg Henderson (NZl) Sky Procycling 5:00:56
2 Matthew Harley Goss (Aus) HTC-Highroad
3 Denis Galimzyanov (Rus) Katusha Team
4 Heinrich Haussler (Aus) Team Garmin-Cervelo
5 Peter Sagan (Svk) Liquigas-Cannondale
6 Romain Feillu (Fra) Vacansoleil-DCM Pro Cycling Team
7 Jurgen Roelandts (Bel) Omega Pharma-Lotto
8 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Movistar Team
9 Tomas Vaitkus (Ltu) Pro Team Astana
10 Danilo Wyss (Swi) BMC Racing Team
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