Tom Pidcock and Matteo Jorgenson crash on Tour de France descent of Puy Mary

Usually a fast and skilled descender, it was a surprise to see Pidcock come undone on the downhill, but the road appeared to be covered in some kind of white paint or dust in various spots, which could have made the tarmac more slippery.

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He slid on the tarmac into a car parked on the side of the road that stopped him from going off the course, as he had crashed at high speed on the 10km-long descent.

Jorgenson reportedly also came off, though the TV camera did not catch this, but he was seen dropped and trying to chase back on, but he was soon a good two minutes down. He had a bloodied elbow but gave a thumbs up to the camera, though he did not make it back to the yellow jersey group with team leader Jonas Vingegaard.

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Pidcock was up and racing quickly and returned to the favourites group before the final 20km. Harper was reportedly slower to get going again, suffering from pain in his wrist, according to Eurosport’s on-moto reporter Romain Bardet.

“I didn’t expect it to be like this,” Pidcock told Eurosport. “I don’t know what they do to the roads here, they’ve thrown all sorts of white shit over them. It made it very slippery, especially on the descents.

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“I crashed in the middle of one of those corners. I had to chase afterwards, but the damage isn’t that bad. I feel good now, but we have to see what the examinations say later.”

Neither Visma-Lease a Bike or Pinarello-Q36.5 have given any updates about their riders and any potential injuries yet.