Ben Swift avoids the carnage to win stage 2 of the Tour Down Under

Ben Swift avoided a huge crash in the final straight to take victory in the second stage of the Tour Down Under.

Swift was lead through the final bend by British Champion Geraint Thomas and managed to power home for his first ProTour victory. The 23-year old, however, left destruction in his wake as he crossed the line. After peeling off to let Swift through Thomas was clipped by another rider, trying to squeeze past, and hit the deck. This cause a chain reaction that sent many others to the floor meaning there was only around 15 riders left in the bunch.

Crash Bash Bang
This wasn’t the first big crash of the stage; another happening only a few moments earlier on a hairpin bend. The tight bend caused several riders to go wide in to the dust on the side of the road, but it wasn’t long before some were down on the ground. Probably the highest profile of these was the HTC-Highroad rider Mark Cavendish, who has had a pretty quite start to the tour so far.

The Manxman suffered some facial injuries, for which he needed stitches, and seemed slightly dazed. His main contender in the Tour de France later this season Tyler Farrar also came a cropper on the hairpin bend. Despite his injuries Cavendish crawled across the line over three minutes behind Swift, eager to continue in the race he often dismissed; Thomas also crossed the line with a few bumps and bruises.

Goss Hits the Deck
Tour leader Matt Goss was also caught up in the crash in the final few meters along with Julian Dean and Andre Greipel. Goss’ fall was Robbie McEwen’s gain as the older Australian took control of the Ochre jersey for the third stage.

Ag2r’s Yuriy Krivstov made the first break of the day on his own, but was soon joined at 17km by David Tanner and Mitchell Docker. After several kilometres the group were joined by another trio of Luke Roberts, Simon Zahner and Timothy Roe at 64km. Roberts gave up pretty quickly while Roe launched an attack with only 30km to go, but he was caught not long after his former breakaway compatriots with 8km left.

The top three riders in the classification all sit on the same time giving them all to play for over the following stages. McEwen, Goss and Swift have a four second lead over the next two riders, while the crashes caused a big shake-up in the standings. Stage three will stretch 129km from Unley to Stirling.