Tom Dumoulin slams 'disgraceful' descent after team-mate Steven Kruiswijk crashes out

Kruiswijk dislocated his shoulder after falling on the road coming down from the Col de Plan Bois in the Alps, and is a doubt for the remainder of the Tour.

"It was a disgrace that that descent was in a race," said Jumbo-Visma rider Dumoulin.

"The whole descent was really tricky but the first two or three kilometres were full of gravel, pot-holes, bumps in the road, 15 per cent drops down. That they still put things like this in a race is… well, I'm really angry about it and I'm pretty sorry for Stevie that he has to go home because of this because he was in great shape.

"I hope he's going to be okay for the Tour. But even if he makes it, it's not ideal for his preparation. But this downhill should never be in a race.

"You're fighting with all of the other teams to get to that downhill first."

Dumoulin is just the latest big name to express his discontent with the way cycling is operating at the moment.

Following the horrible crash by Fabio Jakobsen at the Tour de Pologne Sir Bradley Wiggins called for change.

During the latest episode of his podcast, The Bradley Wiggins Show by Eurosport, Wiggins proposes a potential way to make sprinting safer, suggesting that road markings could help riders notice when they’re drifting from their line.

“I instantly thought of the 100m race in athletics and the lanes,” Wiggins said on the podcast. “Lots of sprinters sprint with their head down or looking five metres ahead and are constantly aware of riders coming up, and sometimes you can tend to naturally drift slightly – as Groenewegen did.

“Some sort of markings, or something on a road, systematically in every race, for the last 50m even, so you’ve got some bearing of where you are.

"A lot of sprinters, they don’t do it intentionally, it’s a natural instinct when someone’s coming on either side of you. If you are aware of seeing lines crossing under your wheel as you’re going, you’ll realise that you’re going to get disqualified so you may back off.

“It might not work, but it’s the only thing I can think of when you’re flat-out sprinting. Something needs to be done rather than just disqualifying riders. Someone like Groenewegen now has to live with the consequences of that – no-one in the professional peloton intentionally goes out to do that to a rider.”