A huge crash caused chaos at the finish of the second stage of the Tour de Pologne after two riders touched wheels as the peloton turned on to the home straight, bringing down most of the field.
The Australian rider Caleb Ewan (Orica GreenEdge) appeared to come into contact with Italy’s Sacha Modolo (Lampre Merida) as they neared the end of the 146km stage to Dabrowa Gornicza, southern Poland.
Riders in tow had no escape on the narrow, barriered finish and a mass pile-up ensued. Only nine avoided the incident with IAM Cycling’s Matteo Pelucchi going on to win the stage, oblivious to the crash behind him.
The stage one winner Marcel Kittel (Giant Alpecin) came in second and Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek Factory Racing) took third. The 10th rider to cross the line, Ag2R’s Sebastien Turgot, finished more than a minute after Pelucchi, but all riders reportedly made it to the end of the stage.
Alex Dowsett took to Twitter to confirm he had been unhurt. “Really happy to have avoided that one, hope everyone’s OK.”
The Movistar rider added that the incident had swayed his opinion on disc brakes, which are likely to be brought into the sport in the near future.
“Made me quite anti disc brakes as well. Just my opinion but I think we’d see a ton more injuries from mass pile-ups like that,” Dowsett tweeted. “Exposed sharp metal discs combined with bodies 60kph crash, after watching game of thrones, blades & bodies rarely ends well.”
Kittel (Giant Alpecin) is 12 seconds ahead of Italian Lampre rider Niccolo Bonifazio in the general classification of the seven-stage tour. The 2014 world champion, Michal Kwiatkowski, who was one of the first to fall in the incident, is 10th overall.
