Prosecutors are confident they’ll find the mysterious Tour de France spectator who caused a mass pileup, despite rumors she has fled the country

• A regional prosecutor said he is "confident" of finding the spectator who cause a huge Tour de France crash.
• The woman caused the pileup when she held a sign into the road on the Tour's opening stage.
• Reports emerged on Tuesday that the woman had fled the country by plane, but they appear to be false.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

French police have said they are confident they will track down the spectator who caused a huge crash at the Tour de France on Saturday.

The woman was holding a cardboard sign wishing her grandparents good luck when she collided with Tony Martin of the Jumbo-Visma team.

The rider went down which triggered a mass pileup as other riders tumbled over him.

A number of riders were injured, and Jasha Sütterlin of Team DSM was forced to abandon the race as a result of a severe contusion to his right wrist caused by the crash.

The woman is still at large, French police said, but added that the investigation is moving forwards.

"Things are progressing well and we hope to be able to explain this event within a reasonable time," Camille Miansoni, a prosecutor of the Republic of Brest, where the crash happened, said at a press conference, per French-language outlet Ouest France.

"After the call for witnesses which was launched in the evening, several testimonies were taken. Obviously, you have to cross-check them, you have to check them, it takes a little time."

"I cannot give more elements," Miansoni added, before telling reporters: "We are confident."

Beyond Miansoni's Tuesday statement, no further information about the woman's whereabouts is known to the public.

On Tuesday, English-language outlets including MailOnline and CBS Sports reported that the woman had escaped on a flight out of France.

Those reports appear to have relied on a mistranslation.

Most outlets sharing the new of the woman's apparent departure on a plane cited a Saturday article from Ouest-France, focusing on the sentence below:

"Mais juste après l'incident, cette dernière, de nationalité étrangère, probablement allemande, a pris la poudre d'escampette."

When entered into online translation services like Google Translate, the sentence in English reads: "But just after the incident, the latter [the spectator], of foreign nationality, probably German, took to the skies."

However, the phrase "a pris la poudre d'escampette," taken by some outlets to mean the woman had flown out of France, more literally means "taken the escampette powder," a French colloquialism for "take flight" or "leave without warning."

Beyond that one line in Ouest France's story, there is no concrete evidence that the woman got on a plane to escape France.

French newspaper L'Equipe has reported that if found, the spectator could face a fine of $1,790 (€1,500).

If Sütterlin, the main victim of the fall, decides to file a complaint and escalate the case to a criminal claim then the potential fine could increase to $17,900 (€15,000), and the woman could face a year in prison.