Cav wins with ease in thrilling sprint

The headline here that Mark Cavendish won today's stage 'With ease' is perhaps slightly mis-leading. If you look at an overhead shot of the final 250 metres and in particular the final yards over the line then, yes, it does look easy given that he was second wheel behind his leadout man and burst around him to win the stage by at least a bikes length. But it was far from easy if you watched the lead in to the sprint through the final two kilometres. If anything it was mayhem.

Never before have I seen so many leadout trains going into a sprint. Given the success of Mark Cavendish it's no surprise that everybody wants one, but it was amazing to see them all there in action as the race came to the final few thousand metres. Then as things really came to a head the race split onto two sides of the road.

Andre Greipel's Lotto team had it's train on the far side, while Cavendish had the Omega Pharma Quick Step train on the near barrier. Both men at the head of the train were pushing to keep pace with one another and as it swept left onto the final straight it was the OPQS boys who timed things right and came out of the corner with their man at the front and Cavendish on his wheel.



Cavendish doesn't have these things happen to him by chance. This is the result of months of hard work by his train and it's no coincidence that more often than not he's in the right place and not boxed in. When he eventually kicked for the line he had nothing but clear road in front of him and nobody else stood a chance. It's why he's the finest sprinter in the history of the sport.

To see the whole thing in action was fascinating stuff and certainly the added dimension of other sprint trains in the thick of it as opposed to everyone simply scrambling for a place on Cavendish's wheel made things extra exciting. You could smell a crash coming from a mile away and at one point it looked like it might be the two leadout trains coming together when Greipel suddenly realised that Cavendish was in a better position and dived across the road to find his wheel. I was sure just at that moment that Cav's leadout man would swing off into the path of another train, bringing down half the field.

As it turns out there was a crash to nobodies surprise, just that it came behind the fast men. No word yet whether anyone was seriously hurt but nobody will have lost time given the proximity of the accident to the finish line.

So Cavendish is off the mark now and surely it's the first of several through this Tour. This is why OPQS coveted him so much when it was announced he would be leaving Sky at the end of last year. He's a genius in these situations and has today racked up his 24th Tour de France stage win putting him just one win away from third all time.

Tomorrow he'll have another shot. It's a flat day and it should play out much the same as today. The early break will go away and thanks in part to the race radio they'll be roboticly reeled in just in time for the mass dash for the line. So long as it's accident free I only hope we get the same kind of excitement as today with everyone looking for their train to place them at the front with two-hundred metres to go. Call that controlled mayhem if you want, but it's thrilling to watch.