Tour de France 2018: John Degenkolb wins as Greg van Avermaet extends lead

John Degenkolb won a dramatic ninth stage of the Tour de France that saw Richie Porte abandon and Greg van Avermaet extend his overall lead in a chaotic race across the cobbles.

Four-time winner Chris Froome crashed but recovered to finish with the other main general classification contenders.

Porte was forced out of the race with a suspected broken collar bone after crashing before the cobbles arrived.

Trek Segafredo's Degenkolb outsprinted Van Avermaet and Yves Lampaert to win.

That trio broke clear with 20km to go and, although Van Avermaet had to settle for second, the Belgian now leads Team Sky's Geraint Thomas by 43 seconds in the yellow jersey.

Degenkolb was forced to lead out the sprint but the German had enough power to hold off Van Avemaet and Lampaert and claim his first Tour stage victory.

The 156.5km stage contained 15 cobbled sections, with Froome running wide on the entrance to the eighth sector and tumbling over his handlebars onto a grass bank alongside team-mate Gianni Moscon.

However, with 45km to go at that point, the Team Sky leader had enough time to rejoin the main group and is now up to eighth overall, while fellow Briton Adam Yates, riding for Mitchelton-Scott, is ninth. They are both one minute and 42 seconds behind BMC Racing's Van Avermaet.

Monday is this Tour's first rest day, with riders back in action on Tuesday in a 158.5km stage from Annecy to Le Grand-Bornand.

'Everyone said I was done'

Degenkolb has pedigree on the pave. He won Paris-Roubaix in 2015, the famous one-day cobbled classic known as the 'Hell of the North', and this stage followed a similar route.

However, he has struggled for form since nearly losing a finger after being struck by a car during a training ride with his then Giant-Alpecin team-mates in January 2016.

He was in tears after securing his biggest win since that accident, dedicating the victory to a friend who died last year.

"This is pure happiness, I was chasing this victory for so long, I've been through a lot," he said.

"Everybody said I was done after the accident, that I would never come back, but I said I needed to get one really big victory for my friend."