Greipel admits he was lucky

German Andre Greipel admitted he was lucky to stay on his bike as yet another late crash occurred at the Tour de France on Thursday.

Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) would go on to win his second consecutive stage of cycling's most iconic race ahead of Australian Matthew Goss (Orica-GreenEDGE) and Argentine Juan Jose Haedo (Team Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank) in another sprint finish.

But it could have been so different for the 29-year-old, who only narrowly avoided a crash in the peloton with just under three kilometres to go in the 196.5km race from Rouen to Saint-Quentin.

As the finishing line drew closer, several riders made aggressive moves with American Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Sharp) causing the pile-up when he hit the tarmac.

"I think there was some good bike handling (from me)," Greipel said after stage five.

"You can see from the footage that Farrar did ... well, I don't know what he did ... if there is no space, you cannot get through a gap.

"But somehow I could stay on my bike even though both my feet were clipped out of the pedals. What can I say? It was just lucky.

"Avoiding crashes is a mix of luck and the efforts of my team-mates who try to make sure we are in the right place by riding in the front. It cannot get better than this."

Greipel again praised his lead-out man, New Zealand's Greg Henderson, for guiding him to another stage win.

"Somehow I could avoid the crash of Farrar," he said.

"And then Henderson was waiting for me and the Lotto-Belisol train was working perfectly again. The team set up the sprint for me and I just had some power left.

"I'm really, really happy. That was one of the hardest sprints I've ever done in my career."

Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack-Nissan) retained his seven-second lead in the race for the yellow jersey ahead of race favourite Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) of England and Frenchman Sylvain Chavanel (Omega Pharma-QuickStep).

"It's always a pleasure to ride in the yellow jersey," Cancellara said.

"For us it's been a great opening for the Tour de France. (But) the thought of actually winning the Tour de France is not realistic.

"The Tour is not what I have on my list of goals to win. The Tour is a dream and a dream is not a goal.

"I have the yellow jersey for 26 days now and that's good."