Tour Watch - Stage 11

Tour Watch - Stage 11

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Stage 11 Wednesday, July 15 2009: Vatan - Saint-Fargeau 192 km | Results

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Cavendish Back in Green

Above - Mark Cavendish wins the eleventh stage of the 2009 Tour de France (Peter De Jong/AP/Press Association Images)

The 2009 Tour de France is now past the half way point following stage 11 into Saint-Fargeau. With the toughest climbing still to come, including what promises to be a hellish penultimate stage up Mont Ventoux, there is still a lot to be settled, but as ever with this amazing event, certain rhythms have established themselves: we now have a good idea of who is in form and who is not, who the luck is going with and which teams are hot and which are struggling.

Above all, we now know that Mark Cavendish is the race's leading sprinter. That's not come as a surprise, but to those of us of a slightly negative Anglo-Saxon disposition, used to heroic sporting failures rather than up-and-at-them superstars, it's been a real pleasure to see Mark continue where he left off last year.

In fact, if anything he's even more dominant this year. Stage 11 saw an awkward, twisting, uphill finish, which many believed might catch out the Columbia-HTC rider. His fizzing accelerations are thought by many experts to be better suited to pan-flat finishes. The bigger and more muscled Tyler Farrar and Thor Hushovd are supposed to be the men to watch in the slightly harder finishes where their brute force ought to hold sway over Cavendish's trackie-style blur of leg-speed.

However, Cavendish's win in the Milan-San Remo classic early this season ought to have put paid to this line of thinking. Not only did he muscle his way over the strategically vital hills late in that race, but he also showed real quickness of thought and tenacity in clinching the sprint.

Coming into the final 1000m of stage 11, Cavendish had four of his team-mates lined up leading him out and although the run in to the line made things messier than on the previous stage, the 24 year old still had an impressive measure of protection from his skilled and dedicated team. When he was finally released with about 150m to go, he was once again simply too wick for his rivals. Confidently choosing a slightly lower gear - he later admitted he'd used either the 13 or 14 sprocket - he once again left his rivals battling for second place.

That win put Cavendish back in the green jersey and he and Thor Hushovd are now a country mile clear of their rivals in the competition. As long as they make it to the finish, the jersey is almost certain to go to one or the other. It was also Cavendish's eighth Tour stage win, equaling Barry Hoban's British record. It shouldn't be too long before the record is Cavendish's alone.

Apart from the spectacular finish, Stage 11 saw little action of note. A two-rider breakaway consisting of Marcin Sapa Lampre - NGC and Johan Van Summeren Silence - Lotto never had the sort of lead which would threaten a stage win and they were routinely caught in the final few minutes. Apart from that, the only significant time gains were by Levi Leipheimer and Bradley Wiggins who learnt that their losses of the previous stage - caused by a accident close to the finish - had be negated following an enquiry by the race commisaires. That puts Leipheimer back into fourth and Wiggins back into fifth.