Mark Cavendish suffered a heart-in-mouth moment on stage five of the Tour de Suisse as the Manxman was brought down in a messy bunch sprint.
Having eased off from the front of the pack, where the technical course had made for plenty of jostling for position, Cavendish crashed after Matt Goss (Orica-GreenEDGE) was barged over in front of him.
Taken down in a crash with 300m to go today. Ironically, I’d eased up as I wasn’t willing to risk crashing. #sorehead pic.twitter.com/XwvioXhv1X
— Mark Cavendish (@MarkCavendish) June 18, 2014
With the Tour de France Grand Depart just weeks away, the heavy crash – with Cavendish tumbling over his handlebars – could have had disastrous consequences. Luckily, however, he rolled in mostly unscathed as Sacha Modolo took the stage honours.
Relive the stage through the lens of UCI WorldTour photographer Stefano Sirotti in the gallery below.
