Cavendish Wins Again in Stage Six of the 2010 Tour de France

Mark Cavendish celebrates winning Stage Six of the 2010 Tour de France. (Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

Stage Six was the last flat stage until after the Alps, and HTC-Columbia’s Mark Cavendish was not about to waste the opportunity to get a stage win.

Though HTC’s once-invincible leadout train was shattered by Lampre, in the end a terrific effort by HTC’s Mark Renshaw put Cavendish in position 200 meters out, and once the Manx Missile fired his rocket, even Ale-jet couldn’t match his speed.

Mark Cavendish, in an interview on LeTour.fr, thanked his team for getting him the win, saying they did the work, while “I’m just the guy who puts my hands in the air…

“We’ve only got four guys for the leadout. We’ve had to jump from the back trains to use the other teams that were leading out, and that’s what they were doing. Mark Renshaw kept his cool—he used Lampre, then jumped off Lampre onto Garmin and then delivered me perfectly, 200 meters, 175, and it was just straightforward from there really.”

Garmin-Transitions had the best strategy, but not the best organization. While Lampre fought with HTC on the right side of the road, Julian Dean took the Garmin train down the center, but Tyler Farrar was still stuck on the right. Dean led Robbie Hunter into the lead with a kilometer to go, and around the final bends they were well in control, but they were a rider short to make the distance.

Meanwhile Mark Renshaw made a huge effort to pull even with the Garmin riders, outpacing the other teams.

Robbie Hunter hesitated, then decided to go, but it was too far and too late; Cavendish launched from a perfect position, and dropped Hunter with ease. However, Garmin’s injured sprinter Tyler Farrar managed to latch onto Cavendish as he took off, and despite Farrar’s injuries, he managed to hold on to second.

“Really well organized; we did a really good job today,” Robbie Hunter told Versus. “I came into the front with like 300 to go; I saw Tyler [Farrar] wasn’t on my wheel so I didn’t know if I should go or not—I kind of hesitated.

“Cav obviously had a good run today with Tyler on his wheel. It didn’t work out for us again—Cav had a good day again, we ran second with Tyler. Good so far.”

Alessandro Petacchi finished third, while Katusha’s Robbie McEwen apparently recovered from his injuries and his tetanus shot, came in fourth. Milram’s Gerald Ciolek rounded out the top five.

Carlos Barredo of Quick Step and Alberto Faria da Costa of Caisse d”Epargne got involved in a brief bout of fisticuffs after the race, an exceedingly rare occurrence at the Tour d e France, where such behavior brings mandatory ejection. No word yet on whether the judges saw it or how they will react.

The General Classification was basically unchanged; Gerraint Thomas gained three seconds, while the rest of the top riders’ times were unchanged.

Done With the Plains

The Tour heads uphill for the next several days, starting with a hilly Stage Seven with a long final climb leading to a flat final two kilometers. The stage contains two Cat Three and three Cat Two climbs, but nothing that would break most strong riders. Look for powerful rolleurs like BMC’s Cadel Evans to make up time tomorrow.

When asked by Versus about Stage Seven, Lance Armstrong replied, “Tomorrow’s kind of a medium mountain day. It’ll be selective, but I still think you’ve got forty, fifty guys sprinting for the win tomorrow. The day after that I think, will be the first big selection.”

Tomorrow it’s new race. Everything’s going to change around. It will start changing around tomorrow, then Sunday will be a real shuffle-up I think, going into the Pyrennees. It’s going all right,” Cadel Evans said in an interview on Ozcycling.com.

“Cancellara is going pretty good at the moment. He might be able to hang on and keep the yellow, I’d imagine, if he’s motivated by that. It depends what the other teams want to do, if they want to eliminate him or not. Cancellara has a better chance of making it than [Geraint] Thomas in reality

“Teams been great and everything’s been coming along. We’ll see what tomorrow’s got.”

Stage 6 2010 Tour de France
		Rider	Team	Time
1		Mark Cavendish	HTC-Columbia	5h 37' 42”
2		Tyler Farrar	Garmin-Transitions	+ 00' 00”
3		Alessandro Petacchi	Lampre	+ 00' 00”
4		Robbie McEwen	Katusha	+ 00' 00”
5		Gerald Ciolek	Milram	+ 00' 00”
6		Sébastien Turgot	Bbox Bouygues Telecom	+ 00' 00”
7		Jose Joaquin Rojas	Caisse d’Epargne	+ 00' 00”
8		Edvald Boasson Hagen	Sky	+ 00' 00”
9		Robbie Hunter	AG2R La Mondiale	+ 00' 00”
10		Thor Hushovd	Cervelo	+ 00' 00”
General Classification after Stage 6
	Rider		Team	Time
1	Fabian Cancellara		Saxo Bank	28h 37' 30”
2	Geraint Thomas		Sky	+ 00' 20”
3	Cadel Evans		BMC	+ 00' 39”
4	Ryder Hesjedal		Garmin-Transitions	+ 00' 46”
5	Sylvain Chavanel		Quick Step	+ 01' 01”
6	Andy Schleck		Team Saxo Bank	+ 01' 09”
7	Thor Hushovd		Cervelo Test Team	+ 01' 16”
8	Alexander Vinokourov		Astana	+ 01' 31”
9	Alberto Contador		Astana	+ 01' 40”
10	Jurgen Van Den Broeck		Omega Pharma-Lotto	+ 01' 42”