Cavendish closes in on Merckx's Tour stage win record

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Team Deceuninck Quickstep's Mark Cavendish celebrates as he crosses the finish line. (AFP)
Team Deceuninck Quickstep's Mark Cavendish celebrates as he crosses the finish line. (AFP)

Paris - The Deceuninck-Quick Step rider now has 32 stage wins on the Tour

By Reuters

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Published: Thu 1 Jul 2021, 11:12 PM

Mark Cavendish's stunning comeback on the Tour de France continued when the Briton claimed his second victory in this year’s race with a perfectly-executed sprint on Thursday.

The Deceuninck-Quick Step rider now has 32 stage wins on the Tour and is two short of the all-time record of Belgian great Eddy Merck as he takes part in the world’s greatest race for the first time since 2018.


Cavendish finished off his team mates’ work in the final straight after being led out by Michael Morkov. The 36-year-old Briton beat Belgian Jasper Philipsen and France’s Nacer Bouhanni who finished second and third.

It was Cavendish’s third victory on Chateauroux, where he won his first Tour stage in 2008 and just like 13 years ago, the Manxman held his helmet in apparent disbelief when he crossed the line.


“Chateauroux is a massive old school Tour de France sprint, you can see the finish line from the one-kilometre banner,” said Cavendish, who still refuses to discuss Merckx’s record.

“That’s what special about it. Here, Paris and Bordeaux are big sprint towns and it’s an honour to have won all of them.”

After his victory in Fougeres, where he had already won before, on Tuesday, Cavendish was expected to be in the mix again and he duly delivered as he looked unbeatable in the last 300 metres.

“It’s not like I’m more confident, it’s just that it was less of a shock. We knew we could do it. I’m not saying we knew we would do it, but we knew we could.”

Dutchman Mathieu van der Poel retained the race leader’s yellow jersey as the top positions in the general classification remained unchanged.

Friday’s seventh stage, the longest in this year’s race, is an undulating 249.1km ride between Vierzon and Le Creusot before the riders turn their focus to the mountains on Saturday.

Tour de France results and overall standings

After Thursday’s stage 6

Stage 6 (all same time)

1. Mark Cavendish (GBR/DEC) 3hr 17min 36sec, 2. Jasper Philipsen (BEL/ALP), 3. Nacer Bouhanni (FRA/ARK), 4. Arnaud Démare (FRA/GFJ), 5. Peter Sagan (SVK/BOR), 6. Cees Bol (NED/DSM), 7. Tim Merlier (BEL/ALP), 8. Wout van Aert (BEL/JUM), 9. Michael Matthews (AUS/BIK), 10. Mads Pedersen (DEN/TRE), 11. Sonny Colbrelli (ITA/BAH), 12. Jasper De Buyst (BEL/LOT), 13. Max Walscheid (GER/QHU), 14. Rick Zabel (GER/ISR), 15. Mike Teunissen (NED/JUM), 16. Bryan Coquard (FRA/BBH), 17. Tosh Van der Sande (BEL/LOT), 18. Danny van Poppel (NED/INT), 19. Anthony Turgis (FRA/TOT), 20. Ivan Garcia (ESP/MOV)

Overall

1. Mathieu van der Poel (NED/Alpecin) 20hr 09min 17sec, 2. Tadej Pogacar (SLO/UAE) at 8sec, 3. Wout van Aert (BEL/JUM) 30, 4. Julian Alaphilippe (FRA/DEC) 48, 5. Alexey Lutsenko (KAZ/AST) 1:21, 6. Pierre Latour (FRA/TOT) 1:28, 7. Rigoberto Uran (COL/EF1) 1:29, 8. Jonas Vingegaard (DEN/JUM) 1:43, 9. Richard Carapaz (ECU/INE) 1:44, 10. Primoz Roglic (SLO/JUM) 1:48.


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