Paris-Nice crash leaves Bardet, Schlecks and Gerrans stranded

The switch from Paris-Nice's usual prologue time trial to a road stage resulted in a very nervy start to "the race to the sun." The most obvious result of this was a big crash 20 kilometres from the finish of stage 1 that left many of the stage and race favourites stranded, including Ag2r-La Mondiale team leader Romain Bardet, the Fränk and Andy Schleck (Trek Factory Racing) and Australian champion Simon Gerrans (Orica-GreenEdge).