( CNN ) -- The opening stage of the Tour de France in Corsica Saturday descended into chaos after a team bus became trapped under the finishing gantry in Bastia . As organizers desperately tried to free the bus , the 213km leg from Porto-Vecchio was initially shortened to finish at the three kilometers to go mark . With teams trying to bring their star sprinters to the front of the peloton earlier than expected , a big crash saw Britain 's Mark Cavendish and Slovakian Peter Sagan and some of the race favorites held up . At the same time , the bus , belonging to Australian team Orica GreenEdge was finally removed and the original finish line was reinstated . From the depleted pack , Germany 's Marcel Kittel won a frantic sprint to claim the stage honors for Argos Shimano -- his first win on the Tour de France . Orica GreenEdge 's Matt Goss took a tumble in that sprint to end his hopes with another top contender , Andre Greipel , the victim of a mechanical problem , to leave the way clear for the in-form Kittel to take the first yellow jersey of the 100th edition of the Tour . He edged out Norway 's Alexander Kristoff with Danny Van Poppel of the Vacansoleil team in third place . The bus incident also affected the race 's electronic timing function , but the official Tour de France website announced that because of the incident all the riders would be awarded the same time . Among the favorites for the overall classification , Team Sky 's Chris Froome emerged unscathed , but arch-rival Alberto Contador of the Saxo-Tinkoff team finished with a torn jersey and time trial specialist Tony Martin of Germany suffered a reported broken collarbone . Cavendish , who was looking to add to his 23 career stage wins in the Tour , was critical of organizers after seeing his hopes dashed in the crash . `` What caused the problems was changing the finish . We heard on the radio with literally five kilometers to go that the sprint was in two kilometers , and then one kilometer later they were like 'No , it 's at the original finish . ' It 's just carnage , '' he said . The race continues Sunday with a 156 km second stage in Corsica from Bastia to Ajaccio .
Chaos on opening stage of Tour de France in Ajaccio . Team bus becomes trapped under the finishing gantry . Crash in the run to the finish claims Marcel Kittel , Alberto Contador and Alberto Contador . Alberto Contador of the Argos Shimano team wins the sprint to claim the yellow jersey .