Mark Cavendish’s Tour de France career ended dramatically, on an anonymous stretch of rural road, 60km from the finish of stage eight to Limoges, after a touch of wheels at the rear of the peloton left him lying on the tarmac, clutching his right shoulder.

The crash came after a bump of shoulders in the middle of the peloton rippled through to the rear of the pack. After being left supine on the road, Cavendish eventually climbed into the race ambulance, arm in a sling, and quit his final Tour.

“We were in the back of the peloton just after the first climb of the day and there was a crash in front of us,” his Astana Qazaqstan teammate Gianni Moscon said. “Cav had to brake full gas and he just hit the rear wheel of the guy in front of him and went down.”

Cavendish, who rode his first Tour in 2007, had announced in June that this season would be his last and he was targeting a record-breaking 35th stage victory on the Tour.

“It was quite bad. I stayed with him to see how he was, but he was really suffering,” Moscon added. “There really wasn’t much to say. I tried to see if I could help him to get back to the race, but he had to abandon.”

The Isle of Man rider, so close to a win on Friday’s sprint stage finish to Bordeaux, in which he was second, ends his Tour career level on 34 stage victories with the five-time champion Eddy Merckx. He had recorded the highest sprint speeds in the peloton in this year’s race.

As Cavendish exited the Tour, the peloton raced on and Mads Pedersen of the Lidl Trek team claimed the eighth stage from Libourne to Limoges, in the south-west of France.

Pedersen took the initiative on the uphill finish to the Avenue Garibaldi to take the stage from Jasper Philipsen of the Alpecin-Deceuninck team, who was seeking a fourth stage win of this Tour. Jonas Vingegaard, of Jumbo-Visma, retained the race leader’s maillot jaune.

Philipsen, winner in Bayonne and Nogaro as well as on Friday, again rejected the growing number of negative comments about his sprinting style on Saturday morning in Libourne, after protests from both Cavendish’s team and the Eritrean sprinter Biniam Girmay following his win in Bordeaux. “It’s a pity that there is a fuss about it,” the Belgian said.

Asked what they thought of Philipsen’s sprinting style, some sports directors chose to keep their counsel. “I’m not going to give my opinion on that one,” Matt White of Jayco AlUla said. “It doesn’t help the situation.”

With the latest batch of sprint stages now completed, Sunday’s summit finish to the conical climb of the Puy de Dôme, just outside Clermont Ferrand, looms large. Thirty five years on from the Tour’s last visit, when the Danish rider, Johnny Weltz, won, his compatriot Vingegaard, the race leader and defending champion, will hope to get the better of Tadej Pogacar, of UAE Emirates, on the steep gradients that wind uphill towards the finish.

Jumbo-Visma’s team leader is lucky enough to have Frans Maassen, one of a small number who were also in the Tour peloton on the day of Weltz’s win, as a sports director.

“It was my first Tour de France, but I don’t remember anything about it,” Maassen admitted. “But we did a reconnaissance and Jonas rode up it. He is the only one from our team who has done it.”

The “Giant of the Auvergne” has been visited 13 times before by the Tour and is renowned for the rivalry of the French stars Raymond Poulidor and Jacques Anquetil in 1964, and also the infamous punch delivered to Merckx’s stomach in 1975 by an unruly fan, 150m from the finish.

The final 4km of the climb to the summit are brutally steep and strict rules are being applied to the Tour’s visit, due to the climb’s environmental sensibilities. No cars will be allowed up the climb and spectator numbers will also be restricted.

“A lot of riders will be dropped, but it’s also all about the speed,” Maassen said. “A big showdown is possible and, in the end, I think it suits Pogacar a bit more than Jonas. We will have to see. I hope it’s really hot, because that’s better for Jonas.”