Today took place the 6th stage of “Tour de France”, from Epernay to Metz, 207 kilometers long. A stage expected to be easy for the group, who is approaching the first mountains in this edition of Grande Boucle: instead, two crashes happened during the route – one early, one in the last part – created a lot of emotions and surprises. Katusha Team, unfortunately, had 5 riders involved in the two crashes: in the first Denis Menchov, Oscar Freire and Luca Paolini fell, in the second Giampaolo Caruso and Yuriy Trofimov. All the riders seemed to have reported nothing serious except for Freire: right after the fall the Spanish sprinter didn’t feel bad, but as the route went by he started to complain of a pain in his chest, reason why he lost contact with the group. He’s going to be subjected at some medical examinations in order to exclude any rib fracture. In the final sprint that decided the stage, Luca Paolini was able to enter the top-10, in 8th position; win for Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale), ahead of Andrè Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) and Matthew Goss (Orica-GreenEdge). The good news, for Katusha, come from the general classification: Denis Menchov was able not to lose any seconds against the other favourite riders, while some other like Frank Schleck (RadioShack-Nissan), Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and Michele Scarponi (Lampre-ISD) lost 2’09” due to the crashes. Now, Katusha Team’s leader is 5th, 13” far from the leader Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack-Nissan).