Mark Cavendish wins the third stage of the Tour of Britain 2012
Mark Cavendish like many other cyclists is riding the Tour of Britain to fine-tune his form ahead of the UCI Road World Championships.
The reigning champion is having a terrific season and his current form was evident during the most recent, stage 3 of the British stage race.
"On the first day, what can you do [when you crash] then yesterday we tried something different and it didn’t pay off,” he noted.
“On the twisty bit with 500 [metres] to go I tried to let Luke [Rowe] get away ....but today we were told to follow the script – straight-up sprint – so that’s what we did".
“It was Rowe, we get on really well, he is such a good bike rider you know. He could win the overall. He went long. Earlier Brad [Wiggins] just put a monster turn on through the hardest bit to bring them (the break) back".
Cavendish took a total time of 3 hours, 54 minutes and 30 seconds to complete the race and occupied the top podium position in front of the home crowd.
Leigh Howard of Team Orica-GreenEdge Cycling Team and his teammate Aidis Kruopis claimed the second and the third positions respectively.
Luke Rowe of Team Sky Procycling, Sam Bennett of Team An Post-Sean Kelly, Russell Downing of Team Endura Racing and Boy Van Poppel of Team UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling and Jonathan McEvoy of Team Endura Racing achieved the next four positions respectively.
Bernard Sulzberger of Team Raleigh-GAC wins the first and the second mountains of the race while Kristian House of Team Rapha Condor succeeded during the second climb of the event.
Leigh Howard of Team Orica-GreedEdge is leading the stage 3 overall classifications with a total time of 13 hours, 16 minutes and 28 seconds.
Mark Cavendish holds the second spot with almost the same time while Boy Van Poppel of Team UnitedHealthcare, Luke Rowe of Team Sky Procycling and Rony Martias of Team Saur-Sojasun occupied the third, fourth and the fifth positions respectively.
It will be interesting to see, how Cavendish performs in the coming stages of the British race to claim the first overall spot after the final general classifications.
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