T-Mobile riders Andreas Klöden and Matthias Kessler were both involved in the crashes that marked the early kilometres of stage 16, Klöden hitting the deck after jus 11 kilometres of the race. He finished the stage from Mourenx to Pau but was taken to hospital in the evening for x-rays after complaining about severe pain in his right hand; after his crash, he had been unable to hold the bars when the road surface got at all rough. As it turned out, Klöden had raced nearly the entirety of stage 16 with a broken scaphoid bone, the bone between the wrist and the thumb.
Matthias Kessler also finished the stage, but complained afterwards of headache and spinal pain and was found to have a mild concussion.
Andreas Klöden and his team management will decide tomorrow if he can continue to race. A narrowing of the road had caused the crash, as Klöden had to brake and another rider jammed into him.
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