"Chris and I watched the replay in the bus together, and we saw that neither of us was at fault."

Those were the words of Vincenzo Nibali after stage six at the Tour de France Nibali crashed inside the final kilometer on Thursday, touching the ground in a pile with other General Classification contenders, including Chris Froome of Great Britain, on an uphill sprint in Le Havre.

With no serious injuries, Nibali stood up and finished on the bike of teammate Jakob Fuglsang, and was officially registered two seconds behind stage winner Zdenek Stybar of the Czech Republic.

Race leader and Yellow Jersey Tony Martin of Germany also crashed, but was diagnosed with a fractured clavicle after the stage. Nibali and his main rivals, including Froome remain in the same overall positions with no changes after a day of bright sunshine and less wind than expected along the Atlantic seacoast of northern France.

“The teams always want to be at the front. It's difficult to be well positioned. I crashed 400 metres from the line. I don't quite understand how we found ourselves in such a mess. I don't understand,” he said.

“I was really very angry. In the heat of the moment, I was very angry with him,” he told reporters after the stage. “At the time, I thought he was the one who had hit me and caused the fall, but that wasn’t the case. I’ve watched the video since and I’ve seen that it was Tony Martin’s crash that brought us down. Froome came on the bus to clear things up and I apologised to him as well.

“I don’t know exactly what happened, I saw that there was a deviation from left to right, then I was pushed to the right and I hit Froome, who was on my right. I went down heavily, and Barguil fell on top of me, I think.”

The Astana team leader added he did not suffered any major bruise personally.

“Personally I'm OK. I only slightly hurt my leg et shoulder. It's always a problem to crash.

“My hip hurts a bit because I was caught under other riders. I feel ok, but I took a blow to the shoulder and leg too, and when you hit the ground it’s always uncomfortable.”