📸 Insane! Car drives onto the Star of Bessèges course, causing crash: Van Gils taken to hospital

You would think it is a thing of the past, yet nothing could be further from the truth. It happened again in the Star of Bessèges: a car managed to enter the course. A Mini Cooper met the peloton at a not fenced-off section, causing a crash.

It happened in the middle of the finale: on the last climb, the Côte Cabrières, the car approached the riders. The vehicle then reversed to give the peloton space and found a side road where it could turn in. However, the accordion effect in the peloton caused a big crash, albeit at low speed. About 20 riders ended up on the ground or had to set foot on the asphalt. Jordi Meeus was the main victim: the Belgian, who finished second behind Paul Magnier on day one, had to chase the peloton.

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Van Gils abandons race, victory for Waerenskjold

The crash seemed without much consequence, but as is often the case with low-speed crashes, things turned out differently. Maxim Van Gils was making his debut for Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe and started the French stage race excellently with a fourth-place finish. However, the 25-year-old Belgian was one of the riders who crashed, and the consequences were so bad that he was taken to the hospital. "The guys told me that there was actually a car on the race course driving towards the peloton," team leader Heinrich Haussler told Daniel Benson.

"Then the whole peloton brakes, and the boys were just coming back from the mechanical, and they were at the back of the peloton, and it was like a domino effect. They just rode into the peloton, and Maxim crashed into the ditch." A bad start for Van Gils, in other words. "He seems okay, but he has a lot of pain, of course. He is going to go and get a check-up to make sure that everything is okay." The stage continued after the incident, and the hilly finale did not cause significant splits. Meeus could return to the head of the race, although he did not manage to secure the day's victory: the Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe sprinter finished fourth. The victory went to Søren Waerenskjold, who was too fast for Arnaud Démare and Paul Magnier. The French rider from Soudal Quick-Step thus defended his leader's jersey well.

On Friday, the Star of Bessèges continues with a tough 164-kilometer hilly stage. The finale is a local circuit dominated by two small hills. Whether it will be a sprint depends on the circumstances, but the same cannot be said of Saturday's stage: the queen's stage to Mont Bouquet (4.6 kilometers at 9 percent) is on the program. Sunday's final stage is the old-fashioned time trial in Alès.

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