Mark Cavendish Claims Sprint-Friendly Stage 5
After a slow start to his race, Mark Cavendish has claimed a stage win in the 2010 Tour de France. Wednesday’s fifth stage took riders from Épernay to Montargis over 187.5km, with Cavendish breaking away a short distance from the finish line to claim the victory.
Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara, who finished 32nd among the riders accredited with the same time as winner Cavendish, retains his overall lead and will be sporting the yellow jersey during Friday’s Stage 6.
Team Milram’s Gerald Ciolek finished only a couple of bike lengths after Cavendish, bumping the German rider two places in the overall standings to 125th place.
Norwegian sprinter Edvard Hagen Boasson came 3rd in the stage. Like fellow Team Sky rider Geraint Thomas, who finished 23rd in Stage 5, Boasson looks likely to contend for the green jersey in the stages ahead. Boasson is in 5th place in the points classification standings, with Thomas just behind him in 6th place.
Norwegian sprinter Thor Hushovd, who leads the points classification standings at 102 points, 52 ahead of Cavendish, finished 5th in the stage. While only claiming one stage win so far in the Tour, Hushovd’s consistent sprint performances render him a clear favourite to claim the green jersey.
However, Thursday’s remarkable performance came from Cavendish, who lunged from 36th to 9th place in the points classification standing as a result of his victory. The win came only one day after his HTC-Columbia teammates set up Cavendish comfortably for a sprint finish, only for the British rider to disappoint.
Today, Cavendish was strongly supported by his Australian teammate Mark Renshaw until the final stretches of the stage, where Cavendish delivered the strong finish he failed to produce yesterday.
"It was a technical finish and we got it from all sides from others teams but the guys kept their cool. We kept the speed high and Mark Renshaw did an incredible job, he was fighting with Thor (Hushovd) and Oscar (Freire),” the 25 year-old Cavendish told the press after the victory.
The victory marked the Cavendish’s 11th stage win in the Tour, and it will likely not be his last. In 2009, Cavendish prevailed in 6 stages, claiming a total of 4 in 2008.
The Briton expressed a strong sense of relief and gratitude for the support lent to him by his teammates after the race.
"It has been hard this year and things haven't really gone our way in the first few days of the Tour,” Cavendish said.
"That was bad luck but yesterday the team did amazingly well and I let them down massively at the end. It would have been easy for them to say, like everyone else, 'he hasn't got it anymore' but they were incredible again today," he added.
The relatively flat Stage 5 ensured focus was on the sprinters in this year’s Tour. For the overall contenders, the stage was less about claiming a win than hanging on in the standings ahead of the mountain stages that are set to begin on Sunday.
Team Astana’s Alberto Contador retained his 9th place overall, finishing 19th in Thursday’s stage, while US veteran Lance Armstrong remains in 18th place after finishing 30th.
Friday’s Stage 6 is the longest of this year’s Tour. The flat ride between Montargis and Guegnon stretches for 227.5km, and the flat landscape ensures that the sprinters of the Tour will be on alert.
The stage will be a chance for the Tour’s sprinters to signal their intention of claiming the green jersey, as Cavendish did on Thursday.
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