Wout Van Aert (open in new tab) admitted at the finish of Saturday's Tour de France stage 1 (open in new tab) that he was "too scared" to sprint on the rain-slickened surface. Despite crashing early in the stage, the Belgian said he was pleased that he and Jumbo-Visma team leaders Primoš Roglic and Tom Dumoulin made it through the stage safely.

The opening stage saw a number of riders crash on the first descent of the Côte de Limier and 3km before the finish of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, won by Alexander Kristoff of UAE Team Emirates. Lotto Soudal's teammate John Degenkolb also crashed, finishing the stage outside the time limit. Bahrain McLaren's Raphael Valls will also miss the race with a broken femur.

Juan Art explained that he had expected to have a good chance of winning the race's first yellow jersey if the first stage turned into a group sprint, but decided to back out as the line approached and the rain made the road surface treacherous.

"In the end, I was too scared to sprint. So I didn't get involved," explained Van Aert, who finished 35th in the main group of about 130 riders. [Fortunately, Tom and Primosch stayed out of trouble. 'We were in front the whole race,' he said. Plus, parts of the course were really crazy. It was very slippery and many riders crashed.

"At some point I felt solidarity in the peloton and it got a little easier. Tony's move to calm the peloton was justified in my view," Van Aert said of the agreement between the teams, coordinated by Jumbo Visma's teammate Tony Martin, to effectively make the stage from the second descent of the Côte de Limiez to 25 km remaining neutral He spoke about the following.

"I crashed at 40 km/h myself," Van Aert said, according to Sporza. 'I knew I shouldn't brake, but I had to, and I fell. Fortunately it didn't affect me."

France Maassen, Jumbo Visma's sporting director, added: "The weather was very bad. But we hope the weather will be better tomorrow (Sunday). And it will be a difficult stage."

"Fortunately, despite the crashes of Wout, Amund, and George, the damage is not too bad," Maassen said, adding that former Norwegian road race champion Amund Grondahl Janssen (who replaced Stephen Kruijswijk, who was injured just before the Tour ) and New Zealand's George Bennett also crashed.