Elia Viviani suffered a bad crash as the second stage of Tirreno-Adriatico reached a dramatic conclusion in Cascina. Viviani latched onto Mark Cavendish’s wheel as the action headed for a sprint finish, but the Manxman seemed to suffer a mechanical as he kicked for the line, sending him veering into Viviani's wheel just over 200 metres from home.

The Italian remained on the ground as the peloton passed all around him, but after receiving medical attention he was able to pick himself up and complete the stage.

In amongst all that drama, Jens Debusschere emerged to take the stage victory, with the Lotto Soudal rider rounding Tyler Farrar (MTN-Qhubeka) along the closing straight and then holding off late charges from Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) and Sam Bennett (Bora). Adriano Malori’s presence in the front group ensured the stage one winner defended his lead at the top of the general classification, although Sagan is now level on time with the Movistar rider.

The action took place under clear blue skies and seven riders went on the attack as soon as the race exited Camaiore. Their gap grew to around seven minutes as they took on two laps of the early Pitoro climb, but Movistar gradually put the brakes on and reduced the deficit on the long, flat transfer to Cascina.

The sprint teams aided that chase during the final hour of action and the escapees were eventually hauled back 15km from home. By then the pace had ramped up considerably and Team Sky worked hard to guide Viviani into contention before his hopes of victory were dashed in a frantic finale.

"Elia is pretty battered and bruised," confirmed team Doctor Inigo Sarriegui. "He took a big fall at the end. We took him for x-rays just to make sure everything was okay and they confirmed there are no fractures. Obviously he's lost a bit of skin and he's going to be pretty sore. We'll monitor him tonight and tomorrow before deciding where we go from there."

Sports Director Dario Cioni was sad to see his compatriot go down. He told TeamSky.com:

“Elia took a big bang at the end there and has lost a lot of skin. It was encouraging to see him able to finish the stage though."

“Most of the stage has passed fairly uneventfully, but as is often the case, it got pretty nervous at the end. Salvatore [Puccio] got caught up in another crash about 10km from home, but he was OK, and then we heard over the radio that Elia had gone down as well."

“Being in the team car, we didn’t get to see anything of that last crash, but we’ll assess the situation overnight and see how things develop.

“The plan had been to ride for Elia again tomorrow, but that’s unlikely to happen now, and maybe we’ll try and get Salvatore in the break because the race finishes in his home town.”