🎥 Serious crash in the opening stage of the Tour de France, Visma's Armirail comes off worst

The second stage in a row, the second crash in a tense opening phase. After Biniam Girmay, Maxim Van Gils, and a number of other riders hit the deck on Stage 2, an even larger group of riders went down the following day. In the battle for the breakaway, about twenty riders went down, with casualties from Visma | Lease a Bike and Netcompany INEOS.

With about 182 kilometers to go (after less than 15 kilometers of racing), things went wrong in a small village. On an uphill section, there was a collision between wheels, which triggered a major chain reaction. Bruno Armirail (Visma | Lease a Bike) was the first to go down, taking Michal Kwiatkowski, Thymen Arensman (Netcompany INEOS), and Mathias Vacek (Lidl-Trek), among others, down with him.

The riders from Netcompany INEOS and Vacek were back on their feet quickly, but Armirail had a harder time. The Frenchman, who is riding his first Tour for a Dutch team, got up, clearly in pain in his knee. It took a while before he could get back on his bike, and even then it wasn’t easy. As a result, he had to see the race doctor. Fortunately, he seemed to be doing better later on, as he zoomed past the riders who had fallen behind.

At first Armirail seemed to be in real trouble. After a very slow bike change he shook his head gravely as he made his way through the team cars. We then saw Armirail, not yet back in the bunch, changing his shoes at the team car.

Despite the slow restart and ongoing issues, Armirail did get back into the bunch. We await to hear if there are any further issues for the Frenchman.