Mark Cavendish suffered a frightening crash late in the Milan‑San Remo race but avoided serious injury.

The 32-year-old, who has been plagued by bad luck for more than a year and was riding with a fractured rib, struck a bollard on the approach to the climb of the Poggio with a little under 10km of the 294km race left. Cavendish was sent flying through the air and landed on his back. Tests revealed he had he suffered a fresh rib fracture, on the same side as the one he broke in the opening stage of the Tirreno‑Adriatico last week.

He also suffered bruising and abrasions as well as what the team described as a possible “ligamentous ankle injury” that will require further assessment.

Cavendish had been surprisingly well placed at the time of the incident, given that the 2009 winner had said before the race started that he was there to help his team-mates because of the fractured rib he was carrying.

He has already missed time this season after a crash on the opening stage of the Abu Dhabi Tour left him with concussion. This comes on the back of a 2017 season which was wrecked by illness and injury as he was sidelined for the first half of the year with a virus and did not race again after a crash on stage four of the Tour de France.

The race was won by Vincenzo Nibali after the Bahrain‑Merida rider put in a perfectly timed attack on the Poggio and held off a frantically chasing pack on the Via Roma.