Tour de France: Indurain blames Landa's crashes on poor positioning

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Five-time Tour de France champion Miguel Indurain has argued that Mikel Landa (Movistar) could need to analyse his positioning in the bunch after his latest crash.

Landa's most recent crash happened during the final hour of stage 10 while he was well-placed in the front peloton and Warren Barguil (Arkea-Samsic) accidentally swayed into him after touching wheels with race leader Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-QuickStep).

In the past 12 months, the Basque rider has previously crashed in the Giro d'Italia, the Mallorca Challenge, the Clasica San Sebastian and the Tour de France.

"These things happen in races, but when they always happen to the same person, I think the rider himself has to look at what's going on and see if he's not badly positioning himself in the peloton," Indurain told Radio Marca in a recent interview to celebrate his 55th birthday.

"When these things happen once, it's bad luck," he said. "If it keeps on happening, it's harder to accept."

Looking ahead at Landa's chances in the Tour this year, where the Movistar rider is currently 21st overall, Indurain said, "He's going to have a tough time because he's lost a lot of time to all the other favourites, and it'll be difficult to recover. The first thing he's got to do is get his morale back. He'll have opportunities to fight for the podium or for stages."

Indurain himself was notorious for rarely crashing and having even fewer major injuries in his career either as an amateur or pro, the worst being breaking his wrist twice – in the Spanish amateur nationals in 1981 and in the Vuelta in 1989 – and fracturing his collarbone once, in 1990 in the Volta a Catalunya.