Primoz Roglic was left battered, bruised, limping and in pain after the finish of stage 3 of the Tour de France but post-race x-rays revealed he did not suffer any fractures in his late crash.
The Jumbo-Visma rider leader promised to fight on in the Tour, despite losing a minute to his biggest rivals.
"Luckily we saw that everything is still in one piece and nothing is broken but I have scars all around my body," he said after being taken by ambulance to the Tour de France x-ray truck.
"It was not the best day for us but we go on. We can still continue."
The Jumbo-Visma team had done a reconnaissance of the stage and knew the dangers of the final kilometres but Roglic crashed after what appeared to be a touch of wheels or shoulders with another rider.
Immediately after the crash Jumbo-Visma boss Richard Plugge suggested "a rider bumped him and made him fly," but Roglic was not interested in blaming a fellow rider. He was more critical of the narrow country roads used for the stage.
"It was a super stressful final with all these roads," he said.
"Most of all, it’s shit because we all train hard for this. Nobody deserves to be on the ground."
Jumbo-Visma endured a difficult day, with Robert Gesink crashing out when Geraint Thomas went down earlier in the stage. Steven Kruisjwijk also suffered a nasty cut to his right forefinger that possibly needed stitches and treatment. He finished the stage with his hand covered in blood and was also taken by a race ambulance for treatment and x-rays.
There was talk of riders and teams asking for the stage times to be neutralised at the 8km-to-go mark, but Roglic was not keen to fight for that.
"I’m not the guy who can say these things. I don’t know how it was. There were also other guys laying on the ground," he said.
Roglic appeared to suffer major road rash and bruising to his left buttock but he vowed to race on.
"First I have to get through the next few days and then we’ll see. Not the best day for us but we continue. As long as we are in the race, we can always fight," he concluded.
