ANGERS, France - Lance Armstrong knows his bid for a record sixth Tour de France title could end in one crash.

After largely avoiding the falls that have plagued other riders, Armstrong tumbled off his bike early in the sixth stage Friday but quickly recovered to rejoin the race.

Then at the finish, dozens of riders went down in a pile in front of him. Exasperated, he suggested that organizers of the three-week race should put safety first.

"You saw the big crash at the finish, this is stressful," the 32-year-old Texan said.

"Coming in, they've got the barriers really tight, and you've got 200 guys racing through there at 40 miles an hour. I don't know what ... they're thinking, but you're going to have crashes."

Belgium's Tom Boonen won the stage in a sprint ahead of the spill that took out and held up dozens of riders, including Armstrong.

On Thursday night, Armstrong had told reporters about the strain of knowing that his ambitions in the event - the race he works so hard to win - could all end in a bout of bad luck.

"In this race, I'm always scared, always nervous," he said. "The last two or three days for me, personally, have been really, really nerve-racking."

Down but not defeated, Armstrong scraped himself up off the asphalt and resumed after his fall 20 minutes into the 122-mile ride from Bonneval to Angers.

In the rain-soaked first week, other riders haven't been so lucky.

Italian sprinting specialists Alessandro Petacchi and Mario Cipollini withdrew from the race before the sixth stage. Petacchi, who roared to four sprint-finish wins in the 2003 event, injured a shoulder in a crash on wet roads Thursday.

Former world champion Cipollini fell Wednesday, aggravating a leg injury from the Giro d'Italia in May. That same day, Iban Mayo - once considered a threat to Armstrong - fell out of contention after he crashed and lost crucial minutes.

While Armstrong wasn't hurt, the spill was his biggest scare in his bid for a sixth straight victory.

"It was a typical early race crash," Armstrong said. "There's nothing you can do. You hit the brakes, but bikes don't stop that fast, so I just went over. It wasn't bad, a little bit on the arm, a little bit on the hip."

In another stroke of good fortune, the second spill that held him up almost within sight of the finish happened close enough to the line that he wasn't docked valuable time.

Under the rules, competitors held up in a crash in the final kilometer of a stage are given the same time as the winner.

That meant that while Armstrong finished 34th, German Jan Ullrich - his most feared rival - didn't make up time on the defending champ with a 26th-place finish.

Frenchman Thomas Voeckler of Brioches La Boulangere maintained the overall lead. Armstrong remained 9 minutes, 35 seconds back in sixth place, and Ullrich was another 55 seconds back.

Barring any mishaps, Armstrong is confident he can recover the leader's yellow jersey by the end of the three-week race in Paris on July 25, expecting Voeckler to fade.

Taking the yellow jersey made the 25-year-old French champion a homegrown hero overnight, but he still shows deference to the leader of the pack.

Ensnared in Armstrong's crash, he rolled over the champion's feet - and was quick to apologize.

"I hope I didn't twist his ankle," Voeckler said.

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Associated Press Writer John Leicester contributed to this report.

AP-ES-07-10-04 0136EDT