Tour de France 2021 - Chris Froome hopeful of avoiding serious injury after caught up in horrific Stage 1 crash

Chris Froome is hopeful he has escaped serious injury after being caught up in a horror crash at the Tour de France.

Stage 1 was a chaotic race with several crashes and none more horrifying than a massive pile-up approaching the final climb of the day.

Replays showed Froome was one of several riders taken down in the melee, which appeared to kick off when a B&B Hotels p/b KTM rider hit the tarmac.

Froome, a four-time Tour de France winner, appeared to be in considerable pain but managed to finish the race – albeit at a considerably slower pace.

“Not how I planned for today to go but I managed to finish. Off for some scans,” Froome said on Twitter.

“I will update this evening. I hope everyone else who came down is okay.”

Froome crossed the finish line after being helped by Israel Start-up Nation team-mates Omer Goldstein, Rick Zabel and Reto Hollenstein.

He finished 171st place, 14:37 minutes behind stage winner Deceuninck-QuickStep rider Julian Alaphilippe.

It was almost a case of last-man standing at the finish line as Alaphilippe took a risk to stage an attack on the frontline with 2.3km left.

The world champion was too fast for the chasing pack and edges 12 seconds ahead of his rivals in the first standings.

"It’s really incredible, honestly," Alaphilippe said.

"It’s a scenario I imagined and the start of my Tour is a success. It’s a super feeling, my team did great work, they took care of me and controlled things. In the final, I was caught up in a crash but I was able to stay calm and then I had to finish off the work on the final climb, where we really wanted to make it hard and get rid of the sprinters. When Dries opened the gap I gave the maximum without asking any questions,” the yellow jersey holder said at the finish.

"It wasn’t planned to go from that far but when I went I saw I had a small gap and I saw everyone was à bloc so I decided to keep going. In the final kilometre, I saw the gap wasn’t coming down. Every time it’s an emotion I can’t describe.”

He added: "It’s a joy for me to win but also to give emotions to those close to me. This is really a special win for me."