Tour de Force from Cavendish
Updated on 05 July 2009
A perfect finish saw Britain's Mark Cavendish win the second stage of the 2009 Tour de France to enhance his standing as cycling's leading sprinter.
The 24-year-old won four stages in 2008 before exiting early to focus on the Beijing Olympics and Sunday's victory was his fifth career win in cycling's most prestigious race.
The victory gives Cavendish increasing hope of reaching Paris on July 26 in the green jersey for the points classification champion and was his 42nd professional triumph, surpassing the previous best by a British rider of 41 held by Chris Boardman.
Tyler Farrar of Garmin-Slipstream and Agritubel's Romain Feillu were beaten in the sprint to the line by the Team Columbia-HTC rider, who is in his third season as a professional.
"It's brilliant," said Cavendish. "I was in good form, you could see the team were motivated for the sprint, all nine of us were riding out in the front there at the end.
"We were the only team for a while sprinting with Saxo-Bank and then Cervelo came in with one guy. When we put two guys in, when we took control we showed we meant business and I'm happy to finish it with a win."
Swiss Fabian Cancellara, who won Saturday's time-trial opener, retained the yellow jersey for his Saxo-Bank team.
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