Andreas Klöden and Alexandre Vinokourov, the favourites for victory in this year’s Tour de France, were hanging on to their ambitions by a thread after crashing heavily during yesterday’s fifth stage from Chablis to Autun.

The archives will cite Filippo Pozzatto as the stage winner but the Italian’s sprint success, which snuffed out a last-ditch attack by David Millar, of Great Britain, was a mere footnote to a dramatic day’s racing.

Klöden, of Germany, is in second overall place, but left the finish area slumped across the back seat of his team car, immobile with pain, as Vinokourov, his Kazakh teammate, pondered his own slide down the overall classification from twelfth to 81st, more than two minutes behind the race leader, Fabian Cancellara.

Klöden was the first to fall, tumbling into a ditch. Fifty kilometres later, as the stage reached its climax, Vinokourov was left sprawled at the roadside clutching his right arm, his racing shorts bloodied and torn.

Unlike Klöden, Vinokourov was unable to rejoin the main field. Even a tumble for Cancellara, caused when he missed a right-hand bend in the final frantic moments of the stage, failed to work in the Kazakh’s favour and he finished in 83rd place, almost a minute and a half behind Pozzatto, his hopes of victory in Paris on the wane.