Jurgen Van Den Broeck lost a bit of time to his podium rivals in today's first mountain stage of the Tour de France but the Belgian refuses to hit the panic button. Instead, he writes it down to the fact that he has hit the deck three days in a row.

Blel Kadri has won the eighth stage in the Tour de France. Alberto Contador got second at more than two minutes. Vincenzo Nibali was third. As expected the first stage in the Vosges made several changes to GC. Jurgen Van den Broeck is now tenth at 3'02" of leader Nibali.

Kadri left Chavanel behind and reached the top of the final climb first. He's the new leader in the mountain classification. The Frenchman finished first on the final climb as well. Tinkoff raised the pace on the climb to Gérardmer. In the final kilometer Contador accelerated, Nibali followed. It was only in the last meters that Nibali lost a few seconds on Contador. Jurgen Van den Broeck lost 1'20" to Contador and is now tenth in GC.

Today Bart De Clercq abandoned. After his crash in the fourth stage to Lille De Clercq had an ankle injury.

“The doctor told me that I should not underestimate the impact of the three crashes on my body and that’s why I’m not panicking," he said. "My legs were not good today but on La Planche des Belles Filles, I lost much more in 2012 and I even became fourth.

"I’m at about a minute from the third place I’m targeting so I don’t have to panic. The high mountains are still coming up but it’s a pity I dropped a few places today. Monday could be completely different. What’s a minute on a high mountain? And I managed to stay upright.

“On the Col de la Croix des Moinats, it went really hard and I didn’t feel 100 per cent. On the second climb, I got going better and I knew I had to limit my losses.

“He [Andrew Talansky] was sliding away right next to me. I had to swerve and was heading straight towards a child. Luckily his dad was able to pull the kid away. Due to the crash, I lost contact with the group. If you have to make up a hundred metres when you’re not feeling great then you have to take risks.”

"I think we shouldn't underestimate the impact of three crashes in three consecutive days," manager Marc Sergeant said. "Today Jurgen lost some time, while he had won some on the cobbles. I think we ought not to panic, most of the riders that are in front of him are within forty seconds.

"Tomorrow I expect the GC riders will keep calm and on Monday there will be action again. Losing Bart De Clercq is of course sad. We had hoped he could recover, but his ankle injury is too bad to continue the Tour."