If getting the Tour de France caravan to Corsica was a tale of planes, trains and automobiles, yesterday's finish to stage one of the French island's triptych of race days was a frenzied chaos of stranded team buses, dramatic crashes and ripped Lycra.

The Tour's first-ever stage in Corsica, finishing in Bastia and won by Marcel Kittel, built to an explosive climax. In a surreal finale, the Orica-GreenEdge team bus found itself lodged under the finish line gantry, as the peloton sped into the city.

Even as officials and policemen, and one very shame-faced bus driver, battled to free the huge vehicle, the peloton entered the final kilometres, fuelled by ambition for the first yellow jersey of the 100th Tour.

As confusion reigned over the exact location of the finish, and the Australia team's bus finally freed itself, crashes ensued, with serious repercussions for several of the Tour's big stars. Alberto Contador, widely seen as the greatest obstacle to a victory for Britain's Chris Froome, bit the dust, getting gingerly to his feet with a bloodied elbow and damaged shoulder.

Peter Sagan, one of Mark Cavendish's big rivals for the green jersey, also took a heavy tumble, while Froome's key helpers, Ian Stannard and Geraint Thomas also fell hard.

"What caused the problems," Cavendish said, "was the change to the finish. We were hearing in the radios with five kilometres to go that the finish was in two kilometres. Then a kilometre later it was switched back to the original finish. It was carnage."

Cavendish was disappointed not to have contested the finish, but relieved to have avoided the crashes. "I'm lucky I didn't come down. Some of my team-mates are a lot worse."

Scottish rider David Millar did well to avoid the drama around him by finishing in fourth place. He wrote on his Twitter page: "There is NO safe zone in the peloton! You just put your helmet on and hope for the best."

Marc Madiot, the frequently outspoken manager of the French FDJ team, was enraged by the confusion. "If they change the finish because of a problem, everybody says 'OK, we understand,' but to change it back two kilometres later is not correct.

"They made a huge mistake today. The riders and teams are taking huge risks and we're the ones who end up paying."

Paying the highest price was Tony Martin, one of Cavendish's Omega Pharma-Quickstep team-mates. The former world time trial champion made it to the finish, with a ripped back and side but was then taken, semi-conscious, to hospital on a stretcher.

At least Kittel was happy. "It feels like I have gold on my shoulders," he said of wearing the centenary Tour's yellow jersey. "I saw the crash happening and that Cavendish and Sagan weren't there so we decided to take things in hand and do the lead-out for the sprint.

"I didn't know the bus was stuck. About six or seven kilo-metres from the line, our director was shouting in the radio, but the sound of the TV helicopters and the fans was so loud I couldn't hear what he was saying. But I'm pretty happy that they were able to get the bus off the finish line."

This was always expected to be an explosive opening stage but few would have predicted such a finish, even if crashes and collisions characterise the Tour.

The past and present also butted up against each other as the race began, when the past, a certain disgraced Texan, and the present, a shiny, evangelical and altogether more wholesome image, collided under the blue skies of southern Corsica.

The nuances may have been lost in translation but Lance Armstrong's comments to French newspaper Le Monde that it is, was, and may still be, "impossible" to win the Tour de France without doping, returned the American to centre stage.

The implication was clear: every champion, if you believe Armstrong, who whatever his other qualities, can obviously be regarded as something of an expert witness, is under suspicion.

According to some, however, including his former team-mate turned anti-doping evangelist Jonathan Vaughters, who led the trail of witnesses to testify against Armstrong, the Tour is in better health than for a very long time.

Yet Vaughters, a former US Postal team-mate to Armstrong and now manager of the Garmin team, agrees that the idea of a clean, transparent and ethical Tour de France is a recent invention.

"People need to remember that the Tour was not started under the Olympic or Corinthian dream," he said. "The Tour was started as a publicity stunt to sell newspapers and that is at the core of the culture.

"So when it started as a publicity stunt, did it matter if you were taking cocaine or whatever to get your ass around France?"

These days, Vaughters argues, people want to see clean, fair and ethical competition.

"But this isn't just about cycling," he added. "You look at the financial world right now and it's clear that modern society expects that the old networks will go away. The only way to be above board is to act transparent".

In his interview with Le Monde, Armstrong made his feelings about Pat McQuaid, the president of cycling's beleaguered governing body the International Cycling Union (UCI), crystal clear. "Things just cannot change as long as McQuaid stays in power," he said.

Armstrong, who has said he would be "first through the door" in the event of any structured truth and reconciliation programme, added: "The UCI refuse to establish a truth and reconciliation commission because the testimony that everyone would want to hear would bring McQuaid, Hein Verbruggen [the former UCI president] and the whole institution down."