took out the green jersey, Jasper Philipsen<\/a>, the winner of stage 1; he was unable to avoid riding into Bryan Coquard who lost balance himself after contact with Laurenz Rex.<\/p>\nLater, at the 3km mark, there was a crash when the road narrowed. Sprinter Jordi Meeus, stage winner on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es in 2023, went down hard with teammate Laurence Pithie. Another victim of that crash was GC rider Remco Evenepoel.<\/p>\n
In the final corner, riders hooked into each other with \u00c9milien Jeanni\u00e8re being the biggest victim with a head injury. Davide Ballerini, Paul Peno\u00ebt, Arnaud De Lie and Bryan Coquard were included too; Coquard made a spectacular forward somersault when flipping over the handlebars.<\/p>\n
Despite all the mayhem, everybody except Philipsen was able to make it to the finish. Peno\u00ebt had to walk to the line because his bike was broken. Jordi Meeus seemed most hurt with blood on his face and a ripped shirt. Evenepoel showed some bruises on his left flank. He was holding his hand on the left side of his upper body when reaching the finish, fearing a rib injury.<\/p>\n
\u2018It wasn\u2019t my intention to cause a crash\u2019<\/p>\n
Bryan Coquard somehow escaped both incidents without major injuries and was very emotional while speaking at the team bus post-race. \u201cEven though it wasn\u2019t intentional, I want to apologize to Philipsen and Alpecin,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not a bad guy. This isn\u2019t very pleasant. I figured that there would be a lot of people waiting for me at the bus to ask about the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to take part in the final sprint but I picked myself up. Then I crashed again. It hurts everywhere and I\u2019ve got a lot of bruises. Voila. We\u2019ll see how it goes,\u201d Coquard said, with a broken voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can imagine that forcing the green jersey to abandon the race isn\u2019t making me happy. I just looked at the TV images. I don\u2019t know what happened at that moment. I have the impression that Milan launched his sprint and maybe I touched his rear wheel or derailleur, or maybe Rex who brought me out of balance; I don\u2019t know what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, it wasn\u2019t my intention to cause a crash. I didn\u2019t want to take risks. I was on the wheel of Milan. I have the impression that I didn\u2019t even touch him. I clipped out of the pedal and almost lost my shoe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The race jury decided that Coquard and Lidl-Trek-rider Edward Theuns rode an irregular sprint. They received a fine, a loss of 13 points in the points classification and a yellow card.<\/p>\n
Theuns was out of the picture in the last part of the sprint. The jury also decided that Danny van Poppel and Ballerini were to blame for the crash in the final sprint. Ballerini received the same fine as Theuns and Coquard. Van Poppel was also relegated back to 36th place.<\/p>\n
Evenepoel \u2018more or less okay\u2019
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/GettyImages-2223959570.jpg\")
Evenepoel clutches his side as he finishes stage 3. (Photo: Tim de Waele\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Crucially for Evenepoel, his crash happened within the safe zone of 5km to go, thus he received the same time as winner Tim Merlier. It was important to not lose further time to his GC rivals, as occurred on stage 1.<\/p>\n
And luckily, thumbs went up quickly at the team bus about Evenepoel.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first sight, it seems more or less okay,\u201d said team directeur sportif Tom Steels at the Soudal bus.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never good to crash because there\u2019s no time to recover in the Tour. Hopefully it\u2019s nothing major. It was an annoying crash. Somebody panicked and slammed the brakes; Remco was among the casualties. It was hard to control the peloton on these roads with the headwind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though all the fallers except Philipsen were able to finish the race, there\u2019s a good chance they\u2019ll pay a high price later on in the Tour de France. If it\u2019s not during Tuesday\u2019s stage from Amiens to Rouen, it might take its toll later on in the grueling three-week long race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”> DUNKERQUE, France (Velo) \u2013 What…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":246821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[95666,2000,299,36,88916,16151,20680],"class_list":{"0":"post-246820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-bryan-coquard","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-france","12":"tag-jasper-philipsen","13":"tag-remco-evenepoel","14":"tag-tour-de-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114815210968681138","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}