Tour de Farce: Crash carnage

Until the moment William Bonnet touched wheels and Fabian Cancellara was sent hurtling through the air and into a ditch, stage three of the Tour de France had gone to script.

A four-man break had zipped clear at the outset of the 159.5km stage from Antwerp to Huy and rolled through the Belgian countryside and past certainly the best display of tractor dexterity so far in this year’s race.

The race soon approached the birthplace of Belgian legend Eddy Merckx.

Both Merckx and fellow five-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault were spotted at Meensel-Kiezegem as the town unveiled a statue of the Cannibal, who recently turned 70 years old.

The gap was around three minutes as the leaders then edged through the town of Hannut, where local children had put on another display for the Tour’s renowned aerial image crew.

All we needed now was a couple of chateaux and a sighting of Thomas Voeckler’s tongue and this would have been back to reality after the unexpected Dutch devastation of Sunday’s opening road stage.

And then it happened. Just as the break was being reeled in with 60km remaining, FDJ’s Bonnet touched wheels and was sent sprawling, instigating a domino effect in the peloton as scores of riders came together at high speed in a tangle of bikes and limbs.

Had Bonnet hit the deck just a millisecond later then the lamppost at the foot of which many of the unfortunate victims came to a bloody, enmeshed standstill could well have played an even more severe role they it already did.

Orica-GreenEdge were the worst hit: Simon Gerrans withdrew straight away with a broken wrist, Daryl Impey continued with a fractured collarbone before retiring at the end of the stage, while Michael Matthews – for some, one of the favourites for the win on the Mur de Huy – finished some seven minutes slower than anyone else after being distanced while the race was still being neutralised.

Twitter was awash with armchair anger at the mere idea that cycling should put safety first before viewer satisfaction. It was a dangerous precedent to stop the race ahead of the first climb and allow Cancellara – and others – to rejoin the peloton, many harrumphed.

Perhaps still stewing in the bilious hash juices of his team’s almighty stage two bungle on Sunday, Etixx-QuickStep manager Patrick Lefevere was particularly nonplussed.

There was even some road rage between riders from Movistar, Sky and Astana on the front of the pack when the race commissaire’s car forced the pace to come to a standstill.

Anyone watching the repeats of the incident couldn’t fail but see the severity of the crash – and it soon emerged that momentarily stopping the race was perhaps the only real course of action.

Once back under way, the race lost none of its feistiness – with Chris Froome apparently getting into a bit of shoulder handbags with a rider from Ag2R-La Mondiale. Perhaps it was Alexis Vuillermoz of Ag2R-La Mondiale – spurred on at the finish to chase Froome on the Mur de Huy and take a surprise third place?

After Sky bossed the penultimate climb it was the Tinkoff-Saxo team of Alberto Contador who came to the front – minus Roman Kreuziger after he overcooked a bend and skidded off the road.

Although everyone had talked up the chances of one Fleche Wallonne winner, it was not Movistar’s Alejandro Valverde who emerged victorious but the compatriot he supposedly shanked in the 2013 world championships finale, Joaquim Rodriguez of Katusha.

Froome, meanwhile, shed his GC rivals to finish right behind Purito and move into the yellow jersey...

But the image that most of us will retain from what appeared to be quite a routine stage three through Belgium was that of the grim aftermath of one of the most horrific high-speed spills you’ll see in sport.

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In a nutshell: The Tour's longest stage features six cobblestone sections in the final 50km which should separate the men from the boys on a day that starts in Wallonne - the French-speaking part of Belgium.

History: No stage has ever finished in Cambrai before - although it has seen two starts in the past 12 years. When the race featured cobbles last year victory went to cortisol-low Lars Boom, Vincenzo Nibali excelled and Sky's Chris Froome crashed out in the rain before the first sector.

Believe it or not: Peter Sagan won in Seraing in 2012 becoming the first rider born in the 90s to win a Tour stage. Froome has only once ridden across cobbles in a major race - for Barloworld in the 2008 Paris-Roubaix, which he abandoned after crashing into a commissaire's car.

Did you know: Bernard Hinault famously called riding across the cobbles in Paris-Roubaix a "connerie" - or stupidity. But he still won in 1981 despite multiple punctures and crashes.

In the comic strip Asterix and the Banquet, Asterix and Obelix call into Cambrai - called Camaracum - at the end of the third stage of their Tour de Gaul. Picking up local delicacies in each town, they buy some of Cambrai's famous Bêtises - or humbug - sweets.

Look out for: the Roman remains at Bavay, the first town inside the French border from Belgium. The medieval town walls of Le Quesnoy 20km later are even more impressive.

Terminology: Pavé - French word for cobbles. Today's stage uses seven sectors of cobbles, four of which are among the 27 sectors used by Paris-Roubaix (13.3km of the bone-jangling stones verses 57km used in this April's Roubaix - 3km less than last year's Tour stage 5).

Plat du Jour: Liege meatballs served either in a beer sauce or drowning in apple and onion gravy

Tour tipple: Vapeur en Folie (steam madness) is an 8%, hazy amber colour with a white head and a distinctive barnyard feel to it with a not altogether unappealing aroma of overripe, almost rotten fruits - making it almost a hybrid between beer and cider.