“It’s just about keeping fighting,” he told the team website. “We kept fighting today and never gave up. It could have been a lot worse.

“We lost five minutes but I felt like I lost three or four of those on the side of the road – so the legs are obviously decent.

“I’ll aim to have a good rest day tomorrow, give the TT a good bash and then see where we stand.

“It’s obviously going to be super hard to win the overall now, but there are still stages to go for and we might still be able to move up into the top 10 or better.

“At the moment, I just want to use the aggression, race hard and see what I can get out of it.

“I’ve had worse crashes. My shoulder is sore but it’s nothing I can’t deal with. There’s a lot more racing to be had so we’ll get stuck in.”

Yates heads into the second rest day in 16^th place, 4’49” down overall, while Thomas is one place and a further 25 seconds back.

In the battle for the white jersey, meanwhile, Yates – who was wearing the jersey when he crashed, as Bob Jungels (QuickStep Floors) was in pink – is now fourth.

Davide Formolo (Cannondale-Drapac) took over the youth classification lead from Jungels, and is 2’04” ahead of Yates; Jungels is at 45 seconds and stage four winner Jan Polanc at 2’01”.