CYCLING/Tour de France: Stage result and standings:It is a reflection of the part sheer bad luck plays in the Tour that until the recent past the race had a daily award for the most unfortunate rider. The prize has not been awarded for at least a quarter of a century but if it were still on the books, the Manx sprinter Mark Cavendish would be a winner over the first two stages of his debut.

In his second crash in a little over 24 hours, Cavendish yesterday acquired a matching set of abrasions on his left side from the tarmac of a wide Ghent avenue to go with the ones on his right from his close encounter with a spectator near the foot of Farthing Hill in Kent.

He is likely to start today's stage but his T-Mobile team are worried about the bruising and inflammation to his right hip, which took much of the impact. He came down at around 40mph as the field were fighting for position in the run-up to the finish sprint, taken here by the Belgian Gert Steegmans from Belgium's star of the moment, Tom Boonen.

"He took a hell of a fall," said the T-Mobile manager, Bob Stapleton. "Considering the speed he made a good fall of it, but we are looking at his hip. He hit the hip hard and abraded it, but we are looking at the impact on the joint itself. There is every indication he will start tomorrow but we want to make sure we do the right thing."

High-speed crashes in the run-in to the finish sprints are such a common feature of the Tour's first week the rules were recently amended so riders involved in pile-ups in the final three kilometres, rather than the final 1,000m, are given the same time as the stage winner, enabling the overall contenders to stay away from the danger zone at the front where the sprinters and their lead-out men wrestle for roadspace.

Yesterday's chute happened inside the three-kilometre-to-go mark but even so the race's favourite, Alexandr Vinokourov, crossed himself as he went over the finish line as if to thank heaven he had been spared. It was a terrifying pile-up: a clash of wheels between two riders in the first dozen of the fast-moving string caused the Italian Manuel Quinziato of the Liquigas team to go down first. Within a split second the carriageway was a tangled mass of bodies and bikes as the cyclists behind piled into the heap and flew into the barriers. Cavendish flew over the two initial fallers to land on the right side of the road.

He is not the only fastman with cuts and bruises. While Robbie McEwen was a faller on Sunday, yesterday the 2005 points winner, Thor Hushovd and the Italian Daniele Bennati were involved, with Bennati bruising his pelvis.

Cavendish's fellow Briton Geraint Thomas was involved but was not injured. "I fell soft; I landed on a fat sprinter," he said. Fabian Cancellara, who won the prologue time trial in London on Saturday, rode across the finish line holding what seemed to be a broken wrist but within minutes he was saying he had no serious injuries.

Fewer than 25 riders avoided the pile-up and they were led into the finish by four of Boonen's Quickstep team. Steegmans is usually the last in the chain of cyclists who set up the sprint for "Torpedo Tom" and he gave Boonen the perfect lead-out, only to discover his leader was not capable of coming past as expected in the final slightly uphill metres to the finish line.

As a result the pair crossed the line looking at each other in a mixture of relief at having taken victory in their home territory of Flanders and bewilderment at Boonen's relatively poor form. With his third place on Sunday he has done enough to pull on the green points jersey.

The Tour heads to France today, when Compiegne hosts the event's longest stage at 140 miles. Heavy rain is forecast and it could turn into six hours of torment. ... Guardian Service

Overall race leaders (Yellow jersey)

1 Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland) Team CSC 8hrs 36:13secs

2 Andreas Kloeden (Germany) Astana +13secs

3 David Millar (Britain) Saunier Duval +21

4 George Hincapie (United States) Discovery Channel +23

5 Bradley Wiggins (Britain) Cofidis same time

6 Vladimir Gusev (Russia) Discovery Channel +25

7 Tom Boonen (Belgium) Quick-Step +26

8 Vladimir Karpets (Russia) Caisse d'Epargne same time

9 Thor Hushovd (Norway) Credit Agricole +29

10 Alexandre Vinokourov (Kazakhstan) Astana +30

Points (Green jersey)

1 Tom Boonen (Belgium) Quick-Step 56pts

2 Robbie McEwen (Australia) Predictor - Lotto 55

3 Gert Steegmans (Belgium) Quick-Step 46

4 Romain Feillu (France) Agritubel 44

5 Sebastien Chavanel (France) Francaise des Jeux 40

King of the Mountains (Polka Dot jersey)

1 David Millar (Britain) Saunier Duval 5pts

2 Stephane Auge (France) Cofidis 5

3 Freddy Bichot (France) Agritubel 3

4 Andriy Grivko (Ukraine) Milram 2

5 Aliaksandr Kuchynski (Belarus) Liquigas 2

Stage Two (yesterday)

(168.5km from Dunkirk, France to Ghent, Belgium)

1 Gert Steegmans (Belgium) Quick-Step 3hrs 48mins 22secs

2 Tom Boonen (Belgium) Quick-Step

3 Filippo Pozzato (Italy) Liquigas

4 Robert Hunter (South Africa) Barloworld

5 Romain Feillu (France) Agritubel

6 Robbie McEwen (Australia) Predictor - Lotto

7 Erik Zabel (Germany) Milram)

8 Heinrich Haussler (Germany) Gerolsteiner

9 Oscar Freire (Spain) Rabobank

10 Sebastien Chavanel (France) Francaise des Jeux

11 William Bonnet (France) Credit Agricole

12 Bernhard Eisel (Austria) T-Mobile

13 Sebastien Hinault (France) Credit Agricole

14 Philippe Gilbert (Belgium) Francaise des Jeux

15 Enrico Degano (Italy) Barloworld

16 Mathieu Ladagnous (France) Francaise des Jeux

17 Thomas Loevkvist (Sweden) Francaise des Jeux

18 Steven de Jongh (Netherlands) Quick-Step

19 Markus Burghardt (Germany) T-Mobile

20 Murilo Fischer (Brazil) Liquigas all same time