Bad day for Astana riders in Tour de France Stage 11

NUR-SULTAN. KAZINFORM - The 11th stage of the Tour de France brought the peloton from the Atlantic coast (Châtelaillon-Plage) to Poitiers, the riders covered 167.5 km. It was a day for sprinters and, finally, a massive sprint has decided the stage winner: the Australian Caleb Ewan outsprinted the Green Jersey Sam Bennett, Kazinform has learnt from the club’s press service.

Astana’s leader Miguel Angel Lopez finished safety in the main pack surrounded by Hugo Houle, Gorka Izagirre and Luis Leon Sanchez.

Unfortunately, two riders of Astana Pro Team crashed down during today’s stage: Alexey Lutsenko fell down at the start of the stage, while Ion Izagirre was involved in a bad crash inside the last 30 km of racing.

Ion Izagirre was forced to quit the race and immediately after his crash he has been moved to the hospital of Poitiers for a detailed medical checking. Astana Pro Team will give an update on Ion Izagirre statement as soon as get the diagnosis from the doctors.

«It was not our day with two crashes of Alexey Lutsenko and Ion Izagirre. Alexey escaped with some minimal injures, while Ion had a really bad crash. We all hope that everything will be ok with him, we are waiting for the news from the hospital. If we talk about the stage, our main goal today was to protect Miguel Angel Lopez and we did it perfectly,» said Dmitriy Fofonov.

There is no any change in the general classification: Primoz Roglic leads the race, Miguel Angel Lopez is 9th (+1.15).

Stage 12 will be held tomorrow: 218 km from Chauvigny to Sarran.