Australian two-time Paris-Nice winner Richie Porte was sent for scans at hospital to assess the extent of his injuries after abandoning Paris-Nice with 29km of Stage 1 remaining.
Porte picked himself up tentatively from the ground following the crash, in which Connor Swift (Arkéa-Samsic) and Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana-PremierTech) also went down. Porte maintained his feet and was attended by the race doctor despite appearing in considerable pain.
The Ineos Grenadiers joint team leader with Tao Geoghegan Hart remounted in an attempt to continue the race, but quickly decided his injury was too bad to allow him to continue.
Scans at hospital revealed that Porte has not broken any bones and he will return to his European base in Monaco to heal up for the rest of the 2021 season.
Porte wrote on Instagram on the evening of the stage, saying: "Nothing broken but I’m out of Paris-Nice unfortunately. Thanks for all the messages. Feeling beat up and sore but can’t thank INEOS Grenadiers enough for getting around me."
Porte's INEOS Grenadiers teammate Ben Swift (Connor Swift's cousin) was right next to the Australian climber when he crashed and described the circumstances of the incident.
"It was really chaotic throughout the stage," said Ben Swift. "Normally, it would be easy to move up from 60 kilometres to go. We'd move up a little bit, then there'd be a crush, so we waited for the climbs to move up.
"Someone dropped a bottle, George Bennett hit and veered left into Richie, just took Richie's front wheel out. I was right beside it, I saw him go down.
"I didn't know if he got back on or not, obviously we were moving pretty quick at that point. We were waiting for information and it said he was out, so me, Laurens (de Plus) and Rohan (Dennis) rode back at that point."
