Caja Rural sprinter Carlos Barbero Burgos was involved a crash in the sprint on stage 2 of Etoile de Bessges and could not start today's third stage. Barbero suffered a break in the head of his radius on the left hand. The rider has his arm in a sling but hopes to "do a spin on Sunday to see how everything evolves."

With Barbero out of the race, his teammate Fabricio Ferrari went on the attack and his six-rider break was caught less than a kilometre from the finish.

"Iam happy because the legs responded well the whole stage," he said. "Too bad that there was not a little more cooperation in the break so we could have fought it out for the stage win. It is a pity, though it is always difficult for a break to make it to the finish. We had no choice but to keep trying to send encouragement to Carlos Barbero after the crash of the previous stage."