Tour rest day welcome after crashes

SAINT-FLOUR, France — Riders sprawled over the course. One wound up in a ditch, another with a busted leg. Everyone, it seemed, needed ice.

A rest day couldn’t come soon enough.

The bleeding and battered Tour de France field endured its worst day yet of crashes, a strange and dangerous ordeal in which even a car took out riders.

When cyclists ease their aching bones Monday on their day off after nine frenzied and punishing stages, Alexandre Vinokourov will be waking up several hundred miles away in a Paris hospital after surgery on a fractured thigh bone.

Defending champion Alberto Contador’s right knee will be bathed in ice, and Juan Antonio Flecha’s legs will be bruised and scabbed after he was slammed by a car late in Sunday’s stage.

“It is too bad to see riders crashing out of the race like this,” said two-time Tour runner-up Andy Schleck.

Spain’s Luis Leon Sanchez won the ninth stage after a long breakaway in the second day of mountains, and France’s Thomas Voeckler took the yellow jersey from Thor Hushovd. But they left plenty of wreckage behind them.

Cyclists anticipate all number of obstacles during this three-week showcase — wet roads, extreme heat, dehydration, exhaustion, crashes. Getting sent airborne by a Tour car is not one of them.

But that’s what happened to the Flecha and to Johnny Hoogerland as they entered the final stretch of the 129-mile route from Issoire to Saint-Flour in the Massif Central. They were in a five-man front group that included Voeckler, Sanchez and France’s Sandy Casar.

If Vinokourov’s crash, which involved about 30 other riders midway through the stage, was not scary enough, the sight of an out-of-control car swerving right into Flecha was a perplexing sight — even in a race more than a century old.

The impact hit Flecha like a shovel, sending the Spaniard flying sideways into Hoogerland. Hoogerland then soared upward, just scraping a barbed wire fence. Had the Dutchman hit that face first, the damage would have been gruesome.

“I understand that guests want to have a close look at the race,” Sanchez said. “But we need to get a message across to the organizers so that the drivers are more careful.”

Remarkably, Hoogerland, who landed in a roadside ditch, and Flecha, got back up: speed gone, spirit intact.

Vacansoleil manager Michel Cornelisse said Hoogerland had deep cuts to both legs. But the rider still had enough strength to hobble to the podium and slip on the red and white polka dot jersey as the new leader in the King of the Mountains competition.

Flecha’s Sky team manager, Dave Brailsford, was considering a formal complaint.

“We might bring the matter forward tomorrow, but tonight we are not making comments.” he said.

Tour organizers banned the car and its driver from the rest of the race, saying the driver ignored a warning to let a team cars pass to bring a water bottle to Voeckler.