“Whatever limits us, we call fate,” wrote Ralph Emerson, words that were resounding loud in the Tour yesterday. A fateful crash inside the final 3 kilometers prevented Mark Cavendish’s chance to equal Armstrong’s record of 22 stage wins in the Tour, and in his expressions if not words, he seemed to blame lady luck. But as the quote above would remind him, it is not for great men to blame fate, even so when on numerous occasions it has been kind to him.

Yesterday, it was smiling on André Greipel, the German who had narrowly missed out on victory in stage 2. He was delivered to perfection by his team’s lead out men, and once in the clear with 250mtr to go, never had a problem holding off Alessandro Petacchi and Tom Veelers. Matt Goss was the expected challenger, but he could only finish fourth, ahead of Peter Sagan.

Despite the strong finish, much of the focus remained on the big pile up caused by Robbie Hunter, who seemed to have clipped a fellow rider’s wheel as the peloton was steaming in for a sprint finish. At 40mph there is no chance for anyone to take evasive action, and the entire lot behind him either succumbed to a fall, or were held up with nowhere to go. Worst to come out were Cavendish and his teammate Bernard Eisel.

Both men remounted and seemed to suffer only superficial injuries as a result of the tumble. Eisel needed stitches over his right eyebrow, while the world champion’s torn jersey hinted at quite a bit of painful road rash underneath. Their team’s directeur sportif, Sean Yates later said about Cav, “He’s covered in cuts, all over. On his back, on his legs, on his shoulder, on his hip, so yeah, he’s beaten up.”

All the top GC men too were held up in the crash, though fortunately none took a tumble and since the incident happened inside the 3km mark, all of them received the lead pack’s timing. It is the primary reason riders always try to stay at the head of the pack, as crashes generally happen towards the middle or rear of the peloton. For Greipel all the hard work of his Lotto-Belisol teammates was worth the trouble, firstly keeping him out of the chaos, and then guiding him in text-book fashion for an uplifting victory.

Even before the race started on Tuesday, the dark cloud of stage 3’s crashes hung over the competitors, as Maarten Tjallingii of Rabobank did not make it to the start line due to injuries sustained on the previous day. Yesterday’s breakaway came right at the start, this time three men, Yukiya Arashiro (EUC), David Moncoutie (COF) and Anthony Delaplace (SAU) surging to the lead. While the stage featured four climbs, Michael Morkov, who is comfortably ahead in the King of the mountains classification, chose to take a breather having attacked for three straight days previously.

First action of the day came at the intermediate sprint, which whipped up a frenzy among the sprinters in the peloton to accumulate points for the green jersey. With no incident, Cavendish beat Goss, Renshaw and Sagan to close the gap narrowly on the Solvak. Rolling ahead there was a minor crash when Australian Jonathan Cantwell catapulted into the grass margin, taking GC contender Vicenzo Nibali along with him. No panic for the Italian though, as he escaped without any injury and with the help of teammates caught up with the peloton a short while later.

There was hardly any event to talk of for most of the distance and on such days you really have to feel for the commentators as they try hard to keep the viewers entertained and engrossed in the proceedings. From castles en route to cheese to the fancy dress of road side fans, small talk of varying topics seems to be the solution, which if nothing is food for idle thought at best.

Dumb Tour fact for the hungry: Did you know Radioshack-Nissan rider Maxime Monfort has a cheese named after him in his native Belgium. Maybe its laced with extra carbs to sate those hungry muscles.

Entering the last 10kms, the peloton had more on their mind than cheese as the initial attacks started to emerge. Gilbert, Dumoulin, Bouet, Pineau and Grivko all tried their luck, but none could open up a gap more than 20 odd meters over the hungry pack of wolves (read sprinters) behind. That man Sylvain Chavanel has been obsessed to don yellow since the prologue this year (trailing a mere 7 seconds behind Cancellara), and yesterday too his gave his all. Sadly yet again he timed the attack a bit too early and did not have the legs to sustain the pace till the finish line.

Ultimately the crash partly decided the result, making the finish a three-way fight between Greipel, Petacchi and Goss. Though the man of this Tour, Peter Sagan too gave it a shot, he was always an outside chance, and eventually could not match the burst in pace of the specialist sprinters. His fifth place finish at least consolidated his place further in the points table.

After the stage Tour leader Fabian Cancellara had an explanation to the chaotic finish, “In my opinion there is not one team making a train like [Mario] Cipollini or Cav had in the past. That is probably the difference, there is no sprinter team with six or seven riders putting everything in line. With 3km to go there was a mass of riders and someone touched someone else. It’s not done on purpose, just everyone fighting to get the best spot.”

For sure such crashes are not intended and mere accidents, but affected riders always feel a tinge of being cheated by fate. Fortunately for Cavendish, he won’t have to wait long to test his ability (or fate) again, as today’s stage 5 is even more suited for his ilk. At 196.5km it is shorter than yesterday, and with no climbs en route, it should be one really fast day. Which also means we have to bear more talks of cheese and other such topics as the peloton ambles for 185 of those 196km. The last 10km is all that will matter and with egos bruised, prepare for an explosion extraordinairé.