Cavendish sprints into Green

Mark Cavendish wins the second stage of the Tour de France

The breakaway came as expected, just after the initial climb (won by Tony Martin) however with just 4 participants it was never going to succeed. Jussi Veikkanen (Française des Jeux) , Stef Clement (Rabobank), Cyril Dessel (AG2R La Mondiale) and Stéphane Augé (Cofidis) skipped ahead, they traded KOM points (actually Veikkanen won the 3 remaining climbs to ensure himself some polka dots) and sprint points, but in the end the peleton never let them get more that five and a half minutes away. With 70km to ride Saxo Bank jumped on the front and started chasing and with 40km to go Columbia-HTC decided that if they were going to get Cav the win then they better get going. They caught the escapees just before the 10km mark - when a counter attack by Katusha's Mikhail Ignatiev sort of caught everyone by surprise. Not that it really mattered, how does one man ride solo for 10km against a 187 man peleton led by Columbia? You cant, they let him have his moment in the sun but timed it to perfection, grabbing him at 3km to go before really letting down. From there Columbia were joined by Milram but no one else was going to get a look in today, Columbia were flying and they made a mess of the peleton in the final kilometre, with the pace above 50km/h no others were going to make ground, those at the front made a go of it but Cavendish peeled off and really everyone else was racing for 2nd.

He did it pretty easily with a brilliant burst of speed enough to leave him alone at the front well before the line.

Stage 2 Result

1 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia - HTC
2 Tyler Farrar (USA) Garmin - Slipstream
3 Romain Feillu (Fra) Agritubel
4 Thor Hushovd (Nor) Cervelo Test Team
5 Yukiya Arashiro (Jpn) BBOX Bouygues Telecom
6 Gerald Ciolek (Ger) Team Milram
7 William Bonnet (Fra) BBOX Bouygues Telecom
8 Nicolas Roche (Irl) AG2R La Mondiale
9 Koen de Kort (Ned) Skil-Shimano
10 Lloyd Mondory (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale

Overall Classification
stays the same.

Points Classification.
1 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team Columbia - HTC 35 pts
2 Tyler Farrar (USA) Garmin - Slipstream 30
3 Romain Feillu (Fra) Agritubel 26
4 Thor Hushovd (Nor) Cervelo Test Team 24
5 Yukiya Arashiro (Jpn) BBOX Bouygues Telecom 22

KOM Classification.
1 Jussi Veikkanen (Fin) Française des Jeux 9 pts
2 Tony Martin (Ger) Team Columbia - HTC 6
3 Cyril Dessel (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 5
4 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Astana 3
5 Marcus Fothen (Ger) Team Milram 3