After a frantic opening stage at Paris-Nice, with the general classification already blown apart, there was no let-up in the fraught nature of this year’s ‘Race to the Sun’ on stage two.
Crashes were the order of the day on day one, with even eventual winner Nacer Bouhanni hitting the deck, and the same happened again on stage two, with Gianni Meersman (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) among the high-profile victims.
It left Moreno Hofland to take the stage win, while Bouhanni retained his yellow jersey. But there was plenty more from the stage for us to mull over.
Read our five observations over the following pages, and add your own in the RCUK Forum.