Midway through Wednesday afternoon, a battered and bruised Critérium du Dauphiné peloton picked its way across the finish line of stage 5 still digesting the consequences of the horrendous mass crash that had ripped through the bunch barely an hour before.
Cuts and bloodied elbows, hips and legs were on view throughout the peloton on the neutralised 20-kilometre run-in to Saint Priest, riders in no rush to complete the final part of what should have been an inoffensive and probably uneventful transition stage.
