While the Tour de France can be serious when the racing is in full swing, a sense of humor is always required off the bike. When Mitchelton-Scott director Matt White misspelled Greg Van Avermaet's name on the team radio, the press crew made a short video as a joke.

The clip featured the infamous 1977 Muppets gag, featuring two bright pink characters, the Snows, with lyrics written by Piero Umiliani and sung by Muppeteer Jim Henson as the jazz character Bip Bippadotta The song is a repetition of a catchy tune (Mah Nà Mah Nà).

In the Muppets' sketch, White biffs Van Avermaet's pronunciation to mimic the mix of song and clip; the CCC team had the Olympic champion himself correct him and his facts and start the music.

After watching the video, everyone will no doubt have both the song and Van Avermaet's correct pronunciation in their heads.

With 6km to go, it looked as if the Tour de France's Jumbo Visma might be in trouble again. On Sunday, it was Wout Van Aert who led Tom Dumoulin to the finish after he crashed on the final climb of stage 2. On Monday, Van Aert ran into trouble.

Van Aert was involved in a crash near a roundabout outside Sisteron, but managed to avoid crashing. His bike suffered damage, a broken front wheel, and he had to switch bikes to catch up with the team.

"They crashed right in front of me. I was able to stay on the bike with some acrobatic moves, but I didn't crash," Van Aert said on the team's website. 'Luckily I'm not hurt. I wasn't going to sprint anyway. It was a pretty easy stage and there was no chance to beat the pure sprinters. It was a question of getting through the stage in a safe way, and we succeeded. Tomorrow is an important day for GC. It will be a long day."

Sport director Frans Maassen made it clear that he would protect co-leaders Primoz Roglic and Tom Dumoulin on the 198-km third stage from Nice to Sisteron.

"The riders did a good job. We expected a group sprint and we had a group sprint. You knew that dangerous situations could arise in a stage final like this, but luckily we were spared. Today was a disadvantageous stage for Wout, but there will be days when it suits him," Maassen said.

"First we will focus on tomorrow, it will be an important day for the GC riders. I'm in good shape and I'm confident we can get a good result."

Grupama-FDJ had a tough start to the Tour de France, but even on the hilly early stages, the riders climbed a little extra at the race hotel, and the team posted a tweet about the final climb of the day, the hotel stairs.

Team leader Thibaut Pinot and his second-in-command David Gaudoux went down in a crash on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice with 3km left in the first stage. Pinot seems to be okay, but Gaudou has pain in his back.

"Thibault minimized the damage. That's the biggest thing," said Groupama-FDJ sport director Thierry Briceau after the second stage.

After three days, Pinot is in 30th place, 17 seconds behind overall leader Julien Alaphilippe (Detuning-Quick Step), ahead of the mountain finish of stage 4.

Some of Detuning-Quickstep teammate Julien Alaphilippe was behind the hectic sprint that led to the Frenchman's stage win and the yellow jersey, but they had a hunch. Belgian Dries Devenyns, who finished 14 minutes behind Alaphilippe, said he pulled over to the side of the course to watch the exciting sprint finish on a fan's mobile device.

"I had finished my work, so I kind of pulled over to the side during the last climb. I tracked the last 500 meters on my supporter's cell phone. I wanted to see if he [Alaphilippe] could do it. I myself got emotional and shouted out loud. I am very happy," Devenyns told HLN.be.

Tim Declercq was also unsure if Alaphilippe had won the stage and could not confirm it until after he had finished 17 minutes ahead of the majority of the peloton.

"The radio was broken from the middle of the stage, so I didn't know anything along the way. My radio was broken from the middle of the stage. I heard a lot of people yelling 'Alaphilippe,' but that's nothing special in France. I was hoping so because he really wanted to win here, and seeing him on stage on the big screen was a really big release," said Declercq. He was emotional because he was coming off a close loss in Milan-San Remo. Julien is a super guy. Julien is a super guy.

Alaphilippe broke away on the final climb of the Col de Cattleshman and held off his two breakaway partners, Marc Hirschi (Sunweb) and Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott), to win the second stage of Nice on Sunday.