RACE favourite Alexandre Vinokourov lost over a minute to his main rivals when he crashed on stage five of the Tour de France, between Chablis and Autun.

Italian Fillipo Pozzato won the 182.5 kilometre stage by a nose from Oscar Freire, but the day's real drama came when Vinokourov was knocked off his bike with 20 kilometres to go.

The Kazakh's team mate Andreas Kloden and the Spaniard Alessandro Valverde, both contenders for the overall prize, had suffered problems earlier in the stage, but they were able to rejoin the main field.

Vinokourov was less lucky, crashing so heavily that he took peels of skin off his left buttock and grazed his knee.

All of his team mates, bar Kloden, waited to pace him back to the bunch, but Vinokourov set such a furious pace that none of them were able to stay with him.

He caught up with a group containing the green jersey wearer Tom Boonen, but with few riders able to keep up with him, let alone assist the chase, the Astana team leader lost 1:21 to the leaders.

The hilly stage was too difficult for the pure sprinters like Boonen and Britain's Mark Cavendish, but David Millar launched a late attack before he was reeled in in the final kilometre.

Pozatto was just centimetres ahead of Freire at the finish line, while Fabian Cancellara keeps the yellow jersey, despite misjudging a corner on the final descent and riding into a grass verge.

Sylvain Chavanel, a specialist in futile breakaways, was the day's main protagonist and though his attack failed, as Chavanel's attacks invariably do, he at least had the consolation of taking the King of the Mountains jersey from team mate Stephane Auge.

Erik Zabel, who was fifth, took the green jersey from Boonen.