Riders have lucky escape as media car takes them out

CYCLING:THE TOUR de France is "a massive televisual spectacle" to quote the organiser Christian Prudhomme, but the small screen's contribution was less than glorious 36km from the finish. A car driving personnel from the French channels which cover the Tour collided with the cyclists in the winning escape, sending Juan-Antonio Flecha of Team Sky crashing to the floor while the Dutchman Johnny Hoogerland went flying over him and landed in a barbed-wire fence.

The incident happened as the five leaders who had survived the toughest stage of the race so far were speeding towards the finish. Car No800, bearing stickers from French television, attempted to overtake the escape – a daily procedure for the many vehicles in the race that have “all areas” passes – but they did so driving along the left-hand verge, and disobeying an order from the race’s internal radio system to move aside to permit team managers to drive up to the riders to provide feeding bottles.

The driver saw a tree in his way, and swerved into the road, colliding with Flecha, who was leading the string. The second-placed rider, Thomas Voeckler of France, narrowly avoided the Spaniard, but Hoogerland, who was lying third, rode into him, then catapulted down the left-hand verge into the fence and was lucky to suffer nothing worse than deep cuts.

“It was unbelievable, they were going at 60kmh, I just saw him flying into the air,” said his directeur sportif, Michel Cornelisse.

“He’s bleeding a lot, he has deep cuts in his legs. He was lying in the barbed wire, completely in it, his shorts were completely off, he was completely naked.”

Flecha suffered a bruised elbow and multiple abrasions.

“It is a scandal,” said Prudhomme, a former television journalist himself. A communique from the race organisers described the incident as “intolerable”.

“I don’t know where the car came from,” said Hoogerland. “Before I knew it, Flecha was on the ground and there was nothing I could do. I landed on the fence and I looked at my legs and thought, ‘Is this what cycling is about?’ ”

The Dutchman, who figured prominently in the Tour of Britain last year, was in the lead in the mountains jersey standings when he fell. He crossed the line nearly 16 minutes behind the stage winner, Luis-Leon Sanchez, went on to the podium to receive the polka-dot jersey and then was taken to hospital.

“I have three cuts that are about seven centimetres long and quite deep too. I think I’ll need about 30 stitches at least.”

Sanchez, who outsprinted Voeckler for the stage win, said that in his view there were too many cars getting too close to the riders.

“It’s terrible. There were guest cars following us all day and they were often overtaking us to try and follow the race more closely. Several times when the roads got narrow they were coming close. If there is an accident it’s our bodies against a car. Things like that should not happen in the world’s best bike race. The organisers need to get the message.”

Sky will assess Flecha’s injuries during today’s rest day but are not sure he will continue.

Last night the car and its driver were thrown off the race, which was the minimum possible sanction. The same sanction was issued to a Getty Images motorbike which caught the handlebars of the Saxo Bank rider Nicki Sorensen and sent him flying out of the bunch on stage five in Brittany.

“Two accidents due to media on the Tour de France is two accidents too many,” said Prudhomme. Team Sky and Vacansoleil were last night reserving comment until the rest day.

The incident had a major bearing on the result of the stage by eliminating Flecha and Hoogerland, two of the strongest cyclists in the five-man escape that dominated the day.

However, the mass pile-up on the descent from the Col du Puy Mary that did for Alexandr Vinokourov and Jurgen van den Broeck also decided the fate of the yellow jersey. The crash was so severe that the peloton slowed up for several kilometres to permit the pedalling wounded to regain contact – as they did after last year’s mass pile-up on the stage to Spa – but in doing so the escape’s lead rose from three minutes to a far less manageable seven.

After the crash, the Garmin team of the yellow jersey wearer Thor Hushovd were left short-handed in the chase, and in any case the Norwegian was not in the best of shape.

Voeckler will start stage 10 tomorrow in yellow, the second stint in the maillot jaune of his career and the culmination of a season in which he has won eight races. Since his defence of the maillot jaune in 2004 he has become France’s most popular cyclist. This will do him no harm.