The mildest expression David Millar could find was "It's not like last year at all" as he summed up the most painful weekend of his career, which began with a crash in Saturday's time-trial prologue in Dunkirk and continued yesterday with a fight to stay in contact with the field in spite of his injuries.

Bandaged, bleeding and bruised down his left side, Millar described his progress in yesterday's 122-mile stage as "yo-yoing". In French cycling slang he spent the five hours "doing the elastic", slipping back with each acceleration in the field, hanging on manfully until they slowed up again.

He finally gave up the unequal struggle on the exposed roads around Cap Gris Nez and finished with a group of stragglers 5min 45sec behind the winner, Erik Zabel of Germany, who took the ninth Tour stage victory of his career.

There could hardly have been a greater contrast with last year, when the young Briton was the surprise winner of the prologue time-trial at Futuroscope and proudly paraded his yellow jersey at the front of the bunch through the roads of Poitou-Charentes.

"I didn't sleep well (on Saturday night). I was in too much pain," he said as he pulled on rubber overshoes against the pouring rain at the start. "I was going over (the crash) again and again in my mind. I was just going too fast and lost it." According to eyewitnesses, he misjudged his line on the penultimate corner, and overcompensated.

"From the moment I got out of the team caravan, I just wanted to go back to bed," he said after finishing yesterday. "My body is absolutely knackered. I was bleeding down my leg during the stage. I'm just hoping it can't get any worse than today. It cannot possibly get any worse," he repeated, with the tone of a man who was trying to convince himself without being entirely sure.

How long he can continue in this state remains to be seen, although he hopes he has plumbed the depths. "If I got through today, all that suffering, I'm sure I can get to Paris."

He was not the only man in pain yesterday. The Italian national champion Daniele Nardello - twice a top 10 finisher in the Tour - fell heavily, sat on the tarmac for an age, and finished with blood pouring from his left arm. The Australian Bradley McGee, a bronze medallist in Sydney, experienced both sides of the Tour coin within a few minutes of his first stage in the race, attacking in the finale, being swept up and then swept off in a freak, yet relatively benign "chute".

Much of the stage belonged to two of this year's 51 French starters, who make up more than a quarter of the field: the evergreen Jacky Durand, three times a stage winner and twice a wearer of the yellow jersey, and the unknown Christophe Oriol. They set off together and shared the pace through the Pas de Calais for 75 miles, apart from a brief break when they arrived at a level crossing to find the gates closed.

While they waited for a lengthy goods train to pass, they chatted briefly and shook hands with the spectators, who could not quite believe their luck. They even began signing autographs until the Tour's director, Jean-Marie Leblanc, decided this was not the best form. Once the gates lifted, they set off again, while the peloton was made to stop for an identical spell in the interests of fairness.

That was as much charity as they got, however, and they were duly swept up as the peloton sped between the sea and the lowering sky at Cap Gris Nez, cooled by a fret whisked into their faces by a wind which was strong enough to overturn the crowd bar riers at one point close to the finish. In such a wind, there is always the danger of a split in the field, and the big fish, led by Jan Ullrich and Lance Armstrong, stayed close to the front until the final 50mph dash downhill to the line next to Boulogne's Nausicaa aquarium.

Alongside them was Christophe Moreau, a survivor of the 1998 Festina scandal, who took the first yellow jersey of his career when he won in Dunkirk on Saturday, and retained it yesterday. France is crying out for new cycling heroes, and would like to see him go at least one better than his fourth place of last year.