Canada's Ryder Hesjedal entered Friday's sixth stage of the Tour de France in contention for the title.
Those dreams now appear to be dashed.
The Giro d'Italia winner from Victoria was involved in a huge crash about 26 kilometres from the finish line of the stage from Epernay to Metz through the Champagne region.
Hesjedal started the stage in ninth place, 18 seconds back, but straggled across the finish with an injury more than 13 minutes behind -- all but ending any reasonable hopes of a Tour victory.
"It was the scariest crash I've ever been in, we were doing like 70 (kilometres per hour)," said Garmin teammate David Millar, who had black chain-grease marks all over his arm. "God knows how it happened, some idiot ..."
Frank Schleck of Luxembourg and Mark Cavendish of Britain were among the other competitors caught up in the mayhem that left riders and bikes all over the road.
Main contenders Bradley Wiggins and defending champion Cadel Evans escaped unscathed but at least three riders dropped out of the race.
Slovakia's Peter Sagan and claimed a third stage win by edging Germany's Andre Greipel in a sprint finish of the 207.5-kilometre stage.
Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland retained the yellow jersey.
"I don't know how many stages I can win," Sagan said. "Three is already good, maybe more."
The peloton, led by sprint teams from Orica-GreenEdge and Lotto-Belisol, then caught four breakaway riders with just over a kilometre to go.
Greipel, hoping to claim a third consecutive stage win, was the first to make his move in the final section but couldn't resist Sagan's surge.
"I was in a good position, I kept it and then nothing hampered my effort," Sagan said. "I took Greipel's wheel and everything went according to plan."
Competing in his maiden Tour, Sagan was involved in a crash on Thursday but recovered quickly.
As spirited fans cheered the riders by lifting glasses and Champagne bottles on the side of the road, American rider David Zabriskie launched an attack just five kilometres after the start. He was joined by Davide Malacarne of Italy, Romain Zingle of Belgium and Karsten Kroon of the Netherlands.
The four breakaway riders collaborated well and built a four-minute lead over the peloton before Cancellara's teammates moved to the front of the bunch to set up a faster tempo.
But an early crash involving about 20 riders after 35 kilometres upset the chase and the escapee's advantage grew to more than six minutes after 42 kilometres.
Among those caught in the crash were Rabobank team leader Robert Gesink, winner of the Tour of California this year, and former Spanish Vuelta champion Alejandro Valverde of Spain, but all the riders involved in the pile-up were able to get back on their bikes.
Another crash slowed down the peloton with 60 kilometres to go, with Greipel hitting the ground.
Overall, Cancellara leads the second-place Wiggins -- a pre-race favourite who is hoping to become the first British winner of the Tour -- by seven seconds. Evans climbed one spot to sixth, 17 seconds back, due to Norway's Edvald Boassen Hagen losing more than two minutes in a crash.
The race moves into the mountains on Saturday with a 199-kilometre ride to the ski resort of La Planche des Belles Filles in the Vosges. The stage features the Tour's first category-one climb, a nasty 6-kilometre ascent with the final few hundred meters at an average gradient of 14 per cent.
