10 Jul 2014

Defending champion crashes out of Le Tour

3:42 pm on 10 July 2014

An eventful fifth day on the Tour de France has claimed another high profile casualty - Britain's defending champion Chris Froome who was forced to pull out after crashing twice.

Froome went down only 40 minutes into the latest stage, and again an hour later having started the day wearing a splint of his left wrist from a crash on Tuesday.

The Dutch rider Lars Boom won the brutal stage but the big winner of the day was the Italian Vincenzo Nibali who finished third and gained significant time on all his main rivals, though his overall lead is just two seconds.