BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Alessandro Petacchi of Italy won a crash-marred first stage of the Tour de France on Sunday, with top sprinting rivals and race favorites like Lance Armstrong delayed by spills.
Three crashes tangled up riders in the last few kilometers, including a pileup within the last kilometer. Race leader Fabian Cancellara went down, and defending Tour champion Alberto Contador scraped up a leg by bumping a bike in front as he braked furiously. Both men finished the stage, and only had minor bumps and scrapes.
"Total mayhem," Armstrong quipped, saying several of his RadioShack teammates including Criterium du Dauphine winner Janez Brajkovic got tangled up in the spills -- but not Armstrong himself. The seven-time champion only got delayed on a crash-clogged road.
The overall standings didn't change in the 223.5-kilometer course under sunny skies and along big roadside crowds through flat Belgian and Dutch lowlands from Rotterdam to Brussels.
Cancellara, the Swiss rider who won Saturday's prologue, retained the yellow jersey. Germany's Tony Martin is 10 seconds behind in second, Britain's David Millar lies third, 20 seconds off the pace. Armstrong trails fourth, 2 seconds further back. Contador is sixth, 27 seconds behind.
"Typical first stage: Everybody wants to be in the front, everybody nervous for crashes," Armstrong said, noting that a huge fan turnout on the roadsides was both good and bad.
"Millions and millions on the road, it's a blessing and a curse. It's so great to have so many supporters," he said. However, he added: "It makes the guys super-nervous.
"And on these tight roads, with bad surfaces and a lot of turns there shouldn't be any surprise that there are crashes there."
Top sprinters like Britain's Mark Cavendish, who won six Tour stages last year, and Oscar Freire of Spain, crashed together while negotiating a sharp turn in the last few kilometers.
Then, in the last kilometer, the massive pileup left Lampre rider Petacchi a relatively easy sprint victory ahead of about 20 riders who were able to avoid the spill.
Cancellara went down and Contador slammed on the brakes to avoid the group spill, which blocked up the roadway and prevented a large number of riders from getting through.
"It was really nervous today, and at the end it was just insane," said Cancellara, noting that cycling's biggest races mean many riders jostle anxiously for stage-win glory in the early flat stages.
"At the end, I couldn't do anything. I was also in the chaos," he said. "I hit the ground pretty hard ... Tomorrow I will feel the asphalt that I found at the end."
Millar and Giro d'Italia winner Ivan Basso crashed after a dog darted into the peloton around the 56-kilometer mark -- before getting up and returning to the race.
Even before his own spill, Cavendish was without the services of one of his top lead-out men, as HTC-Columbia teammate Adam Hansen of Australia fell in an early crash. Team officials said it wasn't immediately clear what happened, but they suspected a broken left collarbone and said he'd go directly to the hospital after the stage.
Petacchi clocked 5 hours, 9 minutes, 38 seconds for the stage, and thrust his index fingers in the air and screamed as he crossed the finish. The 36-year-old Italian is riding his first Tour since 2004 -- a year after he collected four stage victories.
Mark Renshaw of Australia placed second, and Norway's Thor Hushovd was third. Nearly all riders received the same time as the Italian stage winner. Contador was 44th, Armstrong crossed in 55th place and Cancellara trailed in 130th.
Under race rules, if a crash takes place in the bunch within the last three kilometers, all the riders in the main pack are awarded the same time -- as long as they cross the finish.
Moldovan champion Alexandr Pliuschin burst out of the pack with about 25 kilometers left to catch three breakaway riders who had jumped out very early. He and Belgium's Martin Wynants held off the main bunch until being over taken with 10 kilometers to go.
Riders embark on another mostly flat ride Monday for the second stage, a 201-kilometer jaunt from Brussels to Spa.
