It began as an almost imperceptible ripple, a brief touch of shoulders between two riders in the pack on the left side of a straight, flat road, and a touch of the brakes. But as the wave shot backward through the peloton, its size and power grew rapidly.
Farther back in the bunch, two riders each with a hand off the bar to take a drink nearly careened into riders in front of them as the group suddenly slowed. As the group compressed to absorb the change in momentum, the wave finally crashed at the very back, as a touch of wheels sent a handful of riders hurtling to the tarmac. When the melee cleared, one stayed down, clutching his right shoulder.
On one level, the crash that knocked Mark Cavendish out of the Tour de France on stage 8 was a senseless, inexplicable tragedy, especially coming a day after he'd come within a skipping drivetrain of a record-breaking 35th stage win. On another, it was entirely predictable; a textbook example of the risks of longitudinal wave propagation within a swarm.
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