Tour de France:  The Cofidis team's path this season, and in the opening days of this Tour, has been as contorted as the great labyrinth in the heart of the Gothic cathedral here, and though a stage victory for their Australian Stuart O'Grady yesterday does not exactly lead to redemption, it certainly came as a relief.

It is worth recapping their year, because it underlines that when O'Grady sprinted up Rue Jean Mermoz, on the outskirts of the city, he was dragging more in his wake than four other cyclists, the Frenchmen Thomas Voeckler and Sandy Casar, the Dane Jacob Piil and the Swede Magnus Backstedt.

Their erstwhile leader David Millar's confession that he had used EPO the week before the Tour was merely the lowest point of Cofidis's annus horribilis. Two other senior riders, Philippe Gaumont and Cedric Vasseur, have been placed under investigation, and the manager Alain Bondue and the doctor have quit.

The team stopped racing for four weeks in April and early May after the publication of explosive extracts from police interviews in the sports daily L'Equipe. It also published a psychologist's report claiming that members of the team were addicted to a sleeping pill, Stilnox. Their world road race champion Igor Astarloa of Spain transferred to another team to avoid the mess.

"The pressure was really on my shoulders after the blows all the team took this season, and we were lacking the big leader for the Tour de France," said O'Grady, referring to Millar's exclusion. "Crossing the line first today means more than any other victory I have taken after all the tough times we've been through. It's been an emotional roller-coaster."

He dedicated the win to "two really good friends of mine", Millar, who brought him to Cofidis, and to Matthew White, their team-mate who was ruled out of the Tour a few hours before the start with a broken collarbone.

In this Tour alone, O'Grady fell off three times in the first four days. "I lay in bed at night, and I would think it just couldn't get any worse."

The 30-year-old from Adelaide has overcome cardiac problems and was close to death after being mugged in Toulouse in 1999, but he said: "The first 10 days when we stopped racing were the hardest of my life. My grandfather had died, my wife went to Australia to support the family, and it was the lowest I've been in my life."

O'Grady described the recent drug scandals as " a hell of a ride" and the other 183 starters yesterday would say the same about the stage. The attacks and the crashes started from the moment the flag was lowered on the outskirts of Amiens.

The rain and the wind had begun a few minutes before the riders lined up not far from the first of the day's four great Gothic cathedrals.

O'Grady knew that Lance Armstrong's US Postal team would not want to defend the race lead in such conditions - "they weren't going to ride hard for 100 miles in the rain the day after the team time-trial" - so there was every incentive as the showers scudded across the cornfields between the nave of Beauvais and the arches at Mantes-la-Jolie before, finally, the twin spires of Chartres rose above the plains like the horns of a giant snail.

The French teams have been having a better Tour than is their wont. O'Grady's stage win was their third in five days following two for the Ag2R team, and the yellow jersey passed to Voeckler, the French national champion, who rides for the Brioches la Boulangere squad. As makers of croissants and pains au chocolat, they could hardly be more home bred.

Amid the squalls, the crashes came thick and fast. One, roughly halfway through, came just as the peloton was splitting in the wind. It involved three of Lance Armstrong's team-mates, Jose Luis Rubiera, Benjamin Noval and Manuel Beltran, plus last year's star sprinter Alessandro Petacchi.

The chase was just beginning behind the five breakaways, but once the peloton had waited for the fallers to catch up, they realised it would be a thankless and dangerous task and were resigned to defeat.

A further chute with 12 miles left was more dramatic still, for all the world as if a giant invisible hand had reached from the heavens and pushed a bunch of midgets to the floor: some 20 fell, to no ill effect.

The upshot was that the five leaders had over a 12-minute lead at the finish, and Voeckler is now almost 10 minutes clear of Armstrong.

Matters are unlikely to improve today as the forecast is for more rain and higher winds. The Tour has not seen conditions like this in its opening week since 1996, when they played their part in preventing Miguel Indurain from taking his sixth overall win. Ominously, however, Armstrong is happier in such conditions than Big Mig ever was.

Stage Five (Amiens to Chartres, 200.5km)

1 Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Cofidis - Le Credit Par Telephone 5hrs 05mins 58secs, 2 Jakob Piil (Den) Team CSC, 3 Sandy Casar (Fra) Fdjeux.com, 4 Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere, 5 Magnus Backstedt (Swe) Alessio-Bianchi all same time, 6 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Lotto-Domo at 12mins 33secs, 7 Janek Tombak (Est) Cofidis, 8 Thor Hushovd (Nor) Credit Agricole, 9 Rene Haselbacher (Aut) Gerolsteiner, 10 Jean-Patrick Nazon (Fra) Ag2R Prévoyance, 11 Erik Zabel (Ger) T-Mobile Team, 12 Jaan Kirsipuu (Est) AG2R Prevoyance, 13 Danilo Hondo (Ger) Gerolsteiner, 14 Allan Davis (Aus) Liberty Seguros, 15 Gerrit Glomser (Aut) Saeco, 16 Laurent Brochard (Fra) Ag2R Prevoyance, 17 Sebastien Hinault (Fra) Credit Agricole, 18 Jan Ullrich (Ger) T-Mobile Team, 19 Michele Scarponi (Ita) Domina Vacanze, 20 Andreas Klöden (Ger) T-Mobile Team, 21 Francisco Mancebo Pérez (Spa) Illes Balears - Banesto, 22 Aart Vierhouten (Ned) Lotto-Domo, 23 George Hincapie (USA) US Postal p/b Berry Floor, 24 Lance Armstrong (USA) US Postal p/b Berry Floor all same time

Overall classification: 1 Thomas Voeckler (Fra) Brioches La Boulangere 20hrs 03mins 49secs, 2 Stuart O'Grady (Aus) Cofidis - Le Credit Par Telephone at 3:13, 3 Sandy Casar (Fra) Fdjeux.com at 4:06, 4 Magnus Backstedt (Swe) Alessio-Bianchi at 6:03, 5 Jakob Piil (Den) Team CSC at 6:58, 6 Lance Armstrong (USA) US Postal p/b Berry Floor at 9:35, 7 George Hincapie (USA) US Postal p/b Berry Floor at 9:45, 8 Floyd Landis (USA) US Postal p/b Berry Floor 9:51, 9 Jose Azevedo (Por) US Postal p/b Berry Floor 9:57, 10 Jose Luis Rubiera (Spa) US Postal p/b Berry Floor 9:59, 11 José Enrique Gutierrez (Spa) Phonak Hearing Systems 10:02, 12 Viatcheslav Ekimov (Rus) US Postal p/b Berry Floor 10:05, 13 Tyler Hamilton (USA) Phonak Hearing Systems 10:11, 14 Santos Gonzalez (Spa) Phonak Hearing Systems 10:12, 15 Bert Grabsch (Ger) Phonak Hearing Systems 10:16, 16 Jens Voigt (Ger) Team CSC 10:18, 17 Oscar Sevilla (Spa) Phonak Hearing Systems 10:19, 18 Manuel Beltran (Spa) US Postal p/b Berry Floor 10:22, 19 Erik Zabel (Ger) T-Mobile Team, 20 Mikel Pradera Rodriguez (Spa) Illes Balears - Banesto both at 10:30