Competitions

Cavendish clinches back-to-back wins at Tour de France

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Parent Category: Competitions

Category: Tour de France 2010

Published on Saturday, 10 July 2010 14:08

Written by Luca Salvatelli

HTC-Columbia's Mark Cavendish has clinched a second straight win in the Tour de France on Friday, powering across the finish line at Gueugnon at the head of the pack for the twelfth stage victory of his career in the race.

Already a winner on stage five of the Tour on Thursday, 24 hours later on stage six Cavendish was once more the fastest and could claim his fifth victory of the season.

Cavendish completed the 227.5 kilometre stage, the longest in this year's Tour, more than a bike length ahead of second place Tyler Farrar of the USA, with Italian Alessandro Petacchi in third.

"Yesterday was really emotional, and today I'm really happy, too. As ever the boys did a great job working hard all the way through the finish and I can't thank them enough for that," Cavendish said afterwards. "HTC-Columbia is not a team of eight guys and me. I'm just the last rider in a nine-man unit."

"[HTC-Columbia teammate] Michael Rogers did some really good work in the final kilometres and then I went with [teammate] Mark Renshaw at the end, following him from one team's train to another. Finally all I had to do was finish off my team's good work, giving it everything with 200 metres to go."

The Briton's latest win is the 56th road victory of his professional career, which includes four stage wins of the Tour de France in 2008, six in 2009 and two in 2010.