The first stage of the Ruta del Sol today offered two race, a road stage of 120km in the morning followed by an individual time trial of 8.2km and the Spanish event got off to a terrible start, with a big crash at great speed that involved 60 riders. The accident forced FDJ rider Alexandre Geniez to withdraw.

"I have seen many crashes in my career but this one was really impressive," FDJ sports director Franck Pineau said. "We were 4 kilometers from the finish, In a long straight line, nice and wide. The peloton rolled with favorable wind and the speed was 90 km/h ... Then there was a huge crash. When I got out of my car, there were riders everywhere. They were screaming in pain, their bikes were broken in two. I was looking for my riders but did not see any. In fact, only two of them avoided the crash, Jérémy Roy (who had a flat tire in the final three kilometers and got the same time as the winner and Cédric Pineau."

Arthur Vichot, Kenny Elissonde, Anthony Roux and Murilo Fischer are all pretty well, with burns and bruises. However Alexandre Géniez whose ankle was swollen immediately, had to give up. He feared a broken ankle but eventually the examinations were somewhat reassuring as it's not broken. "Alexandre suffers from an effusion of blood and on Wednesday night he was unable to use his foot."

It's (almost) anecdotal, but the victory went to Dutchman Pim Ligthart (Lotto-Soudal) who won this season's Grand Prix La Marseillaise. He finished ahead of a group of 27 riders.

"Against all odds, Javier Moreno (Movistar) won the flat time trial this afternoon in 9'51"," Pineau said. "Jérémy Roy ended up 31 seconds behind and is thirteenth overall. Arthur Vichot did a nice TT and was just 3 seconds behind Jérémy but the whole group was homogeneous."