Tour de France: Cavendish crash knocked me for six, admits Yorkshire's Ben Swift

UAE Team Emirates’ Swift went over the handlebars after riding into the stricken Cavendish in the frantic sprint finish to stage four in Vittel last week.

While Cavendish went home with a broken shoulder blade and world champion Peter Sagan was disqualified for causing the incident, Swift thought he had escaped largely unscathed.

But over the coming days, the Yorkshireman realised he was hurting more than he realised.

“That crash really knocked me for six,” he said.

“I didn’t suffer any road rash so you can easily underestimate the affect,” the 29-year-old told Press Association Sport.

“When you see physical damage it’s easy to know you’ve hurt yourself. I really gave myself a whack on the back, and I definitely wasn’t myself in the mountains over the weekend. I couldn’t really push.

“The rest day on Monday was most welcome and then I was feeling a lot better yesterday and quite involved in the sprint.”

Swift crossed the line in 19th place at the end of stage 10 in Bergerac, but only after sitting up having lost the wheels of the leaders, with Marcel Kittel pulling clear to win his fourth stage of this year’s Tour.

Although Swift is primarily known as a sprinter, those are not the stages the former Team Sky rider is targeting here, not least as he sees Kittel as pretty much unbeatable in his current form.

“In the last couple of years we’ve seen the only guy who can really challenge Kittel in good form is Cavendish, and he’s no longer here,” he said. “We saw last year he was equal to him. But Marcel is pretty special and it’s very difficult to come up with ways to try to beat him.

“You need Marcel to make a mistake to beat him at the moment, but I’m happy, I’m feeling better and that was the first sprint I’ve contested since I crashed.”

Rather than the bunch sprints, Swift is looking for his chance in a breakaway, having shown excellent climbing form when he finished second to Sky’s Pete Kennaugh on the Alpe d’Huez in the Criterium du Dauphine last month.

“I’ll take my opportunities as they come along,” he said. “I’m definitely looking to get involved in the sprints because we have got nobody else for them, but I’m looking more to the breakaway days.

“I’ve been struggling in the mountains in the last few days because of the crash, but hopefully there are more days towards the back end of this week (in the Pyrenees). That would give me 10 days since the crash, and hopefully I can continue to get better.”

On Wednesday, Kittel won stage 11 in Pau for his fifth victory of the race so far as Chris Froome retained the yellow jersey.

Kittel made it two wins in two days following his win in Bergerac 24 hours earlier, extending his dominance of the sprint stages in this year’s Tour.

Dylan Groenewegen of LottoNL-Jumbo was second ahead of Team Dimension Data’s Edvald Boasson Hagen.

Dan McLay of Fortuneo-Oscaro came home in fifth, his third top-10 finish of this year’s Tour and best yet, with Ben Swift of UAE Team Emirates ninth.

Team Sky’s Froome crossed the line safely in the pack to retain his 18-second lead over Italian national champion Fabio Aru in the general classification.