Tadej Pogacar was allowed to recover from a late crash on stage 11 of the Tour de France as Jonas Abrahamsen held on for his first Tour win.
As Mathieu van der Poel chased down Abrahamsen and Mauro Schmid during the final 5km in Toulouse, Pogacar went down in the peloton, which was three minutes behind.
But the reigning champion swiftly got back on his bike – and his main rivals for the overall victory eased up to let him rejoin the group.
Meanwhile, Abrahamsen edged out Schmid in a two-up sprint to the line, with Van der Poel crossing seven seconds later having left his charge too late.
Ireland’s Ben Healy still leads Pogacar by 29 seconds in the general classification (GC) having taken the yellow jersey from the three-time winner after stage 10.
Abrahamsen is competing in his third Tour at 29 and spent the first 10 days of last year’s race in the polka dot jersey, worn by the mountain points leader.
But this was a first stage win on the Tour for Abrahamsen and his Uno-X Mobility team, and came just four weeks after the Norwegian rider broke his collarbone in the Tour of Belgium.
Pogacar was unharmed after his crash 4km from the finish of Wednesday’s flat 156km stage, which began and ended in Toulouse.
The Slovenian fell after hitting the back wheel of another rider and slid across several metres of road before struggling to put his chain back on.
It looked as though he would lose 30 to 40 seconds but his main GC rivals Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel sportingly waited for him to catch up.
After this year’s first rest day, it was a dramatic resumption for the Tour, with Abrahamsen and Schmid attacking from the outset to establish themselves in a long-range breakaway.
The stage began at a rapid pace, averaging 52km over the first hour, and splits repeatedly formed in the peloton while a chase group tried to reel in a five-man breakaway, which included British rider Fred Wright.
Wednesday also featured five categorised climbs, with two in the final 14km, when Van der Poel attacked out of the five chasers to close the gap.
Although the Dutch rider wore the yellow jersey earlier in the race, he is now out of GC contention and ultimately fell just short of claiming his second stage win this year.
The race heads into the Pyrenees on Thursday for a 180.6km mountain route from Auch to this year’s first summit finish at Hautacam.-BBC
