When the Tour de France hits the cobblestones of Paris-Roubaix it is always going to deal major blows to the hopes of several GC contenders and that predictably proved to be the case on Wednesday's fifth stage to Wallers.
Primož Roglič's two-minute tumble down the standings after dislocating his shoulder mid-stage grabbed the headlines during what was a dismal day out for Jumbo-Visma. However, there were plenty of other hard-luck stories to tell as the riders battled over 11 punishing sectors of cobblestones en route to the finish just short of the most famous sector of all.
For Bahrain Victorious hopeful Jack Haig, this year's Tour de France will once again be a case of what might have been. After crashing out on stage 3 last summer, he made it two days further this time around before becoming the first rider to abandon the race.
The 28-year-old was caught in a crash with a hay bale at 30km to go that also saw Roglič and Caleb Ewan fall and could be seen walking to the side of the road afterwards. Haig suffered a cut above his elbow that required stitches and abrasions on his back. Bahrain Victorious said CT scans also revealed multiple non-displaced wrist fractures.
Ewan, meanwhile, suffered a "slight concussion" according to the post-stage medical report, and that wasn't the end of the pain for the Australian riders – despite Simon Clarke's stage victory from the breakaway.
AG2R Citroën leader Ben O'Connor finished his day 4:12 down on Clarke and drops to 61st overall, 4:34 down on race leader Wout van Aert. Speaking afterwards, he told the story of his day, saying that he punctured on the second cobbled sector of the day and never got back to the front of the race.
"When I was on the second sector I punctured," he said. "And yeah, the race started to split a lot. It was really, really hard to chase back. There were a million cars in between, too many motorbikes, TV cameras everywhere. A TV camera will come in front of you and then all of a sudden there's a big traffic jam so it was a bit rough for us to chase and we never could get close.
"Maybe we could've all stopped straight away, maybe," he added when asked about how his team responded to the puncture. "But I still had Geoffrey [Bouchard], Mikaël [Cherel] and Benoît [Cosnefroy] for the start and eventually Oli [Naesen] and Bob [Jungels] were with me until the very end.
"The last 40km it was just those two guys. I can't thank them enough because we stayed together and just tried to do a team time trial. But once again we lost a lot of time on the pavé with the cars."
O'Connor finished in a group along with Israel-Premier Tech co-leader Michael Woods, who was already down in 92nd place, and Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert's GC hopeful Louis Meintjes. Elsewhere, Astana's Alexey Lutsenko, who finished seventh at last year's race, lost 2:50 to drop to 50th overall.
"It was just really bad luck," O'Connor concluded on his day. "I'm a bit sad and a bit disappointed. I feel calm for once because it's been really stressful the past few days but I'm just a bit sad because there wasn't a lot else we could've done today."
Elsewhere, the medical bulletin noted that Roglič had suffered "multiple contusions" in addition to the dislocated shoulder that he popped back in himself before continuing to the finish.
Alpecin-Deceuninck rider Michael Gogl, who was the only other abandon of the day in addition to Haig, suffered the most serious injuries of stage 5. The Austrian left the race with a broken collarbone and broken pelvis/iliac bone after crashing with Daniel Oss.
The TotalEnergies rider was racing along the third cobbled sector before colliding with a spectator who was taking pictures with a cell phone and had their back to the race. He suffered a cervical spine trauma as a result.
There were numerous crashes and incidents during the action-packed stage, with the medical bulletin concluding simply with the statement that there were, "many other falls on the pavé without seriousness."
