Injury update from Liege-Bastogne-Liege

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The series of crashes and injuries that has marked the 2015 season continued Sunday in Liege-Bastogne-Liege. One mass crash with about 40 km to go took out a number of riders, and sent Europcar's Yukiya Arashiro to hospital with the most serious injuries.

The Japanese rider lay on the ground a long time and was obviously in pain. It was later reported that he had broken ribs as well as either his humerus or scapula.

LottoNL-Jumbo was the hardest hit team, losing two riders. Bram Tankink tweeted that he was "with concussion and bruises in bed. Nice end to the early season. Can’t remember what happened."

His German teammate Paul Martens tweeted a photo of the cast on his left hand and wrist, having broken a bone in his hand. "Some weeks out but of course I come back!!!"

Gianluca Brambilla of Etixx-QuickStep broke his left collarbone and will require surgery, the team said.

Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEdge) continued his season of bad luck. "I fell off twice, didn't break anything, just lost a fair bit of skin. I am going to be pretty sore for the first few days of Romandie or for most or part of next week I imagine, until I grow some skin back, but I'll still be on the start line and hopefully I won't be too disadvantaged by my injuries!" he wrote optimistically on his personal website.

Another rider who crashed was Team Sky’s Nicolas Roche. "He's fine actually – he went down hard but thankfully was more dazed than injured," said DS Gabriel Rasch on the team's website.

"Once that had worn off he was OK and that's a big relief because we'd feared the worst when we saw him lying on the ground. He took a bang to his head and also to his shoulder, but nothing's broken."

Roche's cousin Dan Martin (Cannondale Garmin) hit the ground in the same crash, but the team has not yet released any information on his condition.