A freek crash has overshadowed Frenchman Arnaud Demare's victory on the fourth stage of the Giro d'Italia in Sicily.
Demare edged out former world champion Peter Sagan in a bunch sprint, relegating the former world champion to his 30th second-place stage finish on a Grand Tour, along with his 16 stage wins.
But as Demare made his way to post-race presentations, his celebrations were muted by chaos at the finish-line, where a helicopter seemed to blow barriers into the path of riders, bringing down Italian Luca Wackermann and Dutchman Etienne van Empel, teammates on the Vini Zabu-KTM team.
Van Empel recovered quickly, but Wackermann was rushed to hospital with injuries that included a suspected broken back.
"He was barely conscious," team boss Andrea Citracca has told Italian TV station RA12.
"The helicopter was flying too low, the movement of the air blew up the barriers. The barriers were not tied properly."
The team later tweeted a photo of Wackermann giving a 'thumbs up' from his hospital bed.
The last 30km of the 140km stage were flat, offering opportunities for the top sprinters and Demare powered across the line fractionally ahead of Slovakian Sagan, who had to settle for second place again as he did on stage two. Italian Davide Ballerini was third.
Portugal's Joao Almeida (Deceuninck-QuickStep) retained the pink jersey and opened a two-second lead over Ecuadorean Jonathan Caicedo, after picking up bonus points in an intermediate sprint.
Earlier in the day, pre-race favourite Geraint Thomas abandoned the event, after his crash in the neutral zone on Monday left him with a fractured pelvis.
"It's so frustrating," Thomas says. "I'd put so much work into this race.
"I did everything I could and feel like I was in just as good, if not better, shape than when I won the Tour.
"So for it just to end like this is gutting," adds the 34-year-old Welshman, who claimed the 2018 Tour de France title.
Sagan's Bora-Hansgrohe piled on the pressure in the day's main climb - the Portella Mandrazzi - hoping to soften up the his main sprint rivals.
The tactic worked to some extent, but there was still enough threat to Sagan in the final sprint, as Groupama-FDJ's Demare showed.
"I wasn't sure that I'd won when I crossed the line," says the Frenchman, who also won a Giro stage last year.
"It was so tight. It's fantastic to have won a Giro stage already in the first days of the race."
Reuters
