"The final virage was slippery and about 10 riders crashed. It changed the whole sprint."

Those were the words of Astana's Ruslan Tleubayev after stage one at the Tour de Picardie. Tleubayev worked for teammate Andrea Guardini in the final kilometers before the expected mass sprint, but the crash disrupted most of the peloton at 350m to the finish.

Saturday's stage will see more of France's sharp and strong winds, but as the finish is on a small hill the chances for a sprinter will go down, while the chances for a rider like Tleubayev or teammate Borut Božič will go up.

Sunday's profile shows a flat finish, but the final circuit along the Atlantic seacoast can be extremely windy, and large groups of riders generally break up into smaller groups as the race changes direction into and out of the strong weather conditions.

Tleubayev, Guardini and Božič all return to racing at the Tour de Picardie along with De Vreese, Kamyshev, Ayazbayev and Kozhatayev after various rest periods following an intensive Spring racing campaign that began for some riders in January at the Tour Down Under and finished for others in early May at the Tour of Turkey.