Massive Tour De France Crash Wipes Out Half Of The Peleton

MASSIVE Tour De France Crash Wipes Out Half Of The Peleton after  a fan disrupted the lead riders

The 108th Tour de France had only just set off on stage one, sent on their way by Tour general director, Christian Prudhomme, when a spectator holding up a homemade sign stepped out in front of the riders, with the lead rider colliding with them, resulting in total carnage as more than half of the peleton was involved in a massive pileup, with riders unable to avoid the fallen bikes in front of them.

German four-time world champion Tony Martin was the first of the riders to go down, with the 36-year-old running into the female spectator who was holding up a cardboard sign with black marker pen text saying ‘Allez Opi-Omi!’, while looking at a television camera, instead of being aware of the approaching pack of bicycles, with Martin taking the whole of his Jumbo Vista team down with him.

Mayhem ensued as rider after rider went to the tarmac, taking Sonny Colbrelli, Marc Hirschi, Arnaud Demare, and reigning world champion, France’s Julian Alaphilippe down, and it was pure luck that none of the riders was seriously injured, as reported by thesun.co.uk.

Twitter was alive with fans making comments about the incident, with one joking, “Great to see spectators back involved in sports eh?”.

Britain’s 36-year-old Chris Froome, a four-time Tour de France winner was also involved in a crash later in the stage, suffering a nasty fall, but was able to remount his bike and continue the race.

Today’s first stage was eventually won by Alaphilippe, remarkably the first French rider to win the famous bike race’s first stage in 20 years.