Crashes mar first stage of Tour de France

A crash-strewn final three kilometres of the first road stage of the Tour de France was won by Alessandro Petacchi in Brussels today.

Mark Cavendish (HTC-Columbia) and Oscar Freire (Rabobank) went wide on a right-hand bend with 3,000m to go of the 223.5-kilometres first stage from Rotterdam to the Belgian capital, before a second – and this time more major - crash one kilometre later wiped out Tyler Farrar’s hopes of an American success on Independence Day.