The Orica-GreenEDGE team was badly hurt yesterday as a mass finish concluded another hectic Giro d’Italia finale in which several crashes complicated the final hour of racing.

Svein Tuft, Brett Lancaster, Christian Meier, Luke Durbridge and Leigh Howard were all involved in pile-ups, with Howard falling heavily on his left shoulder in the largest crash of the race.

"I went straight over my handlebars," explained Howard on the Orica-GreenEDGE website. "There wasn't anything I could to do to stop myself. I landed on my left shoulder, and I'm going to get x-rays now."

Later in the evening [Thursday] X-rays confirmed a clean fracture of Howard’s collarbone, and thus no surgery will be needed. Howard will not start stage seven of the Giro d'Italia on Friday, though, expecting to take ten days off the bike to heal.

"I'm disappointed not to be lining up tomorrow [Friday], especially with a couple more sprint stages in the next two weeks. It would have been good to have a better crack at giving Gossy [Matt Goss] a better lead out to get him up for the stage win. Life goes on, and I'll look ahead to the next race."