Win Number 5 for Mark Cavendish
May 26, 2007; Tour of Catalonia
T-Mobile Press Release (www.t-mobile-team.com)
Britain's Mark Cavendish, riding for ProTour team, T-Mobile, won his second Tour of Catalonia stage win on Saturday - proving that he is the fastest sprinter at the ProTour race. Already the winner of stage one, the British neo-pro beat Colombian Leonardo Duque and Italian Paolo Bossoni in a bunch sprint at the end of the 177-km sixth stage to take his fifth season win.
Russian Vladimir Karpets (Caisse d'Epargne) crossed the line in the main field to retain the overall lead. Meanwhile, T-Mobile's GC leader Michael Rogers moved up to second overall after profiting from a crash that delayed overnight second-place Denis Menchov (Rabobank). With one stage to go, Karpets's advantage over Rogers remains stable at 40 seconds, with Menchov now 44 seconds down.
"Mark is really showing his class here. It's been phenomenal to see the way he has improved here from day to day, and the way he has dug deep on the climbs. Things have gone fantastically well for the team at this tour", said T-Mobile sporting director Jan Schaffrath. Cavendish won the hard way - he was dropped on an early climb and then got held up by a big crash five kilometres from the line.
"I looked him in the eye during the tough and hilly first race half and I knew Mark would dig deep. A great performance," said Schaffrath on the Manx sprinters battle to stay in contention. On the finale Cavendish said: "I had to stop when the crash happened, then we were chasing hard to make sure we didn't lose time. There was a big corner in the final kilometre but I knew it was coming up because I'd memorised it and came round wide," added the 22-year-old Manxman. "After that, I made my move with 150 metres to go."
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