From team leaders to domestiques, winners to favorites, anyone can be in danger of crashing in the Tour de France, and on stage 10, which saw a series of pile-ups and near-misses, GC contenders Tadey Pogachar (UAE Team Emirates) and Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) hit the deck.

Both riders were not seriously injured, but it took them a long time to return to the main peloton, as they passed through a series of very dense road furniture at high speed in the final third of the stage.

Pogachar and Martín were caught in the same group 65 km from the finish, and as Martín told reporters afterward, the cause of the crash was unknown, but the result was clear.

"When we entered Rochefort [town], there was a crash right in front of me and I couldn't avoid it. There were a lot of roundabouts and traffic islands, and the crosswind was also stressful.

"The early part of the course was tough, but it's normal in a Grand Tour to have easy and difficult parts. But when the crash happened, I had just gone through all of that."

Teammate Christophe Laporte, who had been the lead-out man for former Cofidis sprinter Nasser Bouhanni, deftly guided him through the peloton.

"After the fall, I had some pain in my back. My vertebrae may have taken a beating.

"I'm okay, recovering well, and hope to be back on the mountain soon where things are determined by physical condition and not luck."

Pogachar agrees with Martin that the race was very aggressive from the start, and he too was involved in the crash, even though he and his team were as cautious as possible under very risky circumstances.

"The team stayed near the front all day and tried to stay out of trouble as much as possible," Pogachar reported after the race, having already lost time at Echelon last Friday.

"When I crashed, the guys were waiting for me and got me back on track. [Teammate] Davide Formolo crashed hard. He's in a lot of pain, but hopefully he'll recover."