Saturday, July 10, 2010

Stage 6 - Missle Mk II

Mark Cavendish showed he was well and truly back to his best when he dominated the final sprint in Stage 6, a 227km journey from Montargis to Gueugnon. Cavendish was far too strong over the final 200m for his rivals, winning easily from Tyler Farrar with Alessandro Pettach in third. The peleton again all finished together leaving the overall standings unchanged.

The return to form of the Manx man over the last two days has been superb, and he has again put an exclamation mark on his mantle as the world's best sprinter after his won today, the longest stage of this years Tour. The win is Cavendish's 12th Tour stage win of his career, equalling the number of wins of the likes of Erik Zabel and Robbie McEwen. But while those riders notched up their wins over careers spanning more than a decade, Cavendish has done so in only his fourth tour, an amazing achievement. Cavendish showed his versatility in this particular finish, after his HTC Columbia lead out train was swaped by the likes of Garmin and Lampre. This left Cavendish with a lone helper in the finish in Mark Renshaw. Renshaw, easily the best lead out man in the world, ignored the confusion being caused by the other teams, to deliver Cavendish perfectly to the lead with just over 200m to go. And when Cavendish hit the front he went BANG and it was race over! Tyler Farrar trailed Cavendish over the final kilmoetre but could not match the kick of the champion and had to settle for second on the day. Alessandro Pettachi remained in the hunt for the Green Jersey (although he is unlikley to finish the Tour) with third placing in the stage.

With Thor Hushovd only finishing 10th on the stage the race for the Green Jersey has really hotted up. Pettachi now trails the Norwegian by only 2 points with Robbie McEwen a further 9 points back after finishing 4th on the day. Cavendish's second win in just two days now has him up to 5th in the classification, some 33 points behind Hushovd.

The race for the Polka Dot Jersey also hotted up after Frenchman Mathieu Perget, a member of the days breakaway, garnered full points on all four of the cat-4 climbs on offer on the days stage. As a result he gained himself 12 points in the King of The Mountains classification to trail the current wearer of the Polka Dot Jersey Jerome Pinault by just one point.

With the bunch finishing together there was no change to the overall classifcations. Fabian Cancellara retains his overall lead and his hold on the Yellow Jersey while Geriant Thomas still holds the White Jersey for best young rider.

Yellow Jersey - Fabian Cancellara
Green Jersey - Thor Hushovd
Polka Dot Jersey - Jerome Pinault
White Jersey - Geriant Thomas

No comments:

Post a Comment