Tour rider tries to storm rival team bus

Furious American sprinter Tyler Farrar tried to storm into a rival team’s bus after another crash in week one of the Tour de France.

Footage of the incident showed the Garmin-Sharp rider, with his arm bloodied, starting to enter the Argos-Shimano bus to confront a rival.

Argos-Shimano staff quickly stopped him going any further and Garmin-Sharp Jonathan Vaughters soon also stepped in as Farrar was ushered back to his nearby team bus.

Farrar was caught in a crash with 2.5km left in the 196.5km fifth stage on Thursday from Rouen to Saint-Quentin.

It was the fourth time the American has crashed so far this Tour.

Garmin-Sharp had a bad day, with the team featuring heavily in a Dutch media report on Thursday morning about the Lance Armstrong doping case.

German Andre Greipel won his second-straight stage, while Australian Matt Goss narrowly finished second after launching his sprint earlier in an attempt to jump his rivals.

His Australian Orica-GreenEDGE team have managed every placing from second to sixth so far in their debut Tour.

Fellow Australian Jonathan Cantwell (Saxo Bank) also crashed, the day after he recovered from another pileup in stage four to finish an impressive sixth in his Tour debut.

Cantwell said on Twitter he was “very sore with half of my right ass (sic) missing and ankle taking a hit from the gutter”.

Goss said he had no choice but to start his sprint earlier in an attempt to catch out his rivals.

Goss and team director Matt White praised South African Daryl Impey for a faultless leadout that almost propelled the Australian to his first Tour stage win.

“I had to hit out a tad early, Daryl did a super-human job, he went for about a kilometre uphill,” Goss said.

“I really had to go early and try to maintain that speed for as long as I could and drop at the end, rather than drop and try to pick it up again.”

While Goss missed the stage win, he dramatically ate into Peter Sagan’s green jersey lead.

Goss beat Sagan at the intermediate sprint and Sagan was then caught in Farrar’s crash, meaning the Slovakian scored no points at the finish.

After trailling by 55 points, Goss is now on 137 to Sagan’s 155.

“The Tour de France is three weeks, not one day,” White said of the green jersey battle.

There were no changes to the top of the overall standings, with Swiss Fabian Cancellara still leading and defending champion Cadel Evans 17 seconds behind in seventh.

Before the stage started, the race was rocked by the Dutch media report that alleged five of Armstrong’s former team-mates had testified against the record seven-time Tour champion.

Evans’ key BMC lieutenant George Hincapie was one of the riders named, but the American would not confirm or deny the report.

The Roar have special SKODA prize packs to award to Roar of the Crowd writers who send us their thoughts on cycling. Each month we're giving away a prize pack, and at the end you could win a SKODA road bike. Simply submit an article to The Roar and you could win! More details here.