Tour thrills and spills

A THRILLING sprint finish win for Estonian Jaan Kirsipuu and a catastrophic crash in the peloton were the features of stage five of the Tour de France yesterday.

Kirsipuu and four other riders broke away from the peloton just after the halfway mark in the 195km stage from Soisson to Rouen and were never caught. The finish, featuring a fast descent into the historic town of Rouen, seemed likely to feature all five but eventually boiled down to a 30-somethings battle between Kirsipuu, 32, from the Ag2r Prevoyance team, CSC-Tiscali’s 34-year-old Dane Michael Sandstodt, and 38-year-old Belgian Ludo Dierckxsens, from Lampre. The sprinting power of the younger Estonian, who has only recently returned from a serious knee injury, proved just enough to edge out Sandstodt into second place, although veteran Dierckxsens - not known as a sprinter - did try to sneak past both for an unexpected win before fading and finishing third.

Kirsipuu admitted winning his third ever Tour stage had taken a lot out of him. He said: ‘‘For the rest of the tour I will try to recover from the effort today, but I think the rest of the team is much more free in their mind to make moves like they did today.’’