Key moments

He missed out on a stage win in his Tour debut in 2007 but Mark Cavendish has already collected 12 victories: four in 2008, six last year and another two after six stages of the 2010 edition. Once again the early escape was doomed as the sprint teams hunted down the fugitives, catching them 10km from the line and setting up the fastest men in the world. ‘Cav’ has now matched the win tally of the Lion King, Mario Cipollini, and the triple points classification winner Robbie McEwen… and now that his confidence is back, it seems the other sprinters in the race will be vying for second place on the flat days. The mountains lie ahead in the next few days but for now, the Isle of Man’s biggest sporting star is smiling again after finding his form again.

The Progress Report
The longest stage of the 2010 Tour de France, a 227.5km journey from Montargis to Gueugnon, started at 12.02pm with 188 riders at the sign on. The stage featured four small categorized hills – at Bouhy (69.5km), La Chapelle-Saint-André (91.5km), Montarons (179.5km) and Croix de l’Arbre (204.5km). The intermediate sprints were in Saint-Fargeau (47km), Moulins-Engilbert (163km) and Luzy (195.5km).

Escape Forms Without Hassle
For the fifth day in succession, the first men to attempt an escape were able to succeed. Perget (GCE) jumped ahead in the first kilometer and was joined by Lang (OLO) and Perez Moreno (EUS) and the peloton happily waved goodbye and allowed them to build a significant advantage. By the 20km mark the trio had a lead of 7’00” and HTC-Columbia put four riders on the front of the peloton to police the gains. The average speed of the first hour was 42.3km/h. At the 43km mark, the peloton was 7’45” behind. There were a few showers during the second hour and the temperature was 22.5 degrees after an hour and a half of racing.
The maximum gain of the escape was 8’00” at the 63km mark. Grabsch (THR) and O’Grady (SAX) shared the workload at the head of the peloton and slowly but surely reeled in the escape: 5’50” at 118km, 2’55” at 165km, 1’05” at 25km to go.

Counter-Attacking Candidates
Champion (ALM) attacked the peloton on the final climb, with 25km to go in the stage and then Charteau (BTL) followed his compatriot’s example. Just as they were about to catch the stage leaders, Perget attacked. He was solo until 18km to go before being caught by Champion, Perez Moreno, Lang and Charteau. With 15km to go, they had a lead of 21”. The escape was over with five kilometers to go.

Cavendish Takes Two In A Row
After the capture some of the GC riders had a brief stint at the front of the peloton: Contador and Rogers were up there, one to stay out of trouble, the other to start the lead-out for a team-mate. In the rush to the line, the HTC-Columbia team had numbers ahead of Lampre but then Garmin came around the left side and three from that squad led under the ‘flamme rouge’. Around the last turn Dean led before Hunter hit out but up the right side came Renshaw who dropped Cavendish off at the 230m to go mark. The winner of stage five finished off the job again, easily beating Farrar and Petacchi to the line.
Thor Hushovd finished 10th and keeps his green jersey with 118 points, four more than Petacchi and 13 more than McEwen (KAT) who was fourth again today.
The first 14 riders were awarded the same time as the stage winner. Cancellara finished 41st, in a group that was three seconds behind Cavendish. The Swiss rider will wear the yellow jersey in stage seven.

He’s led the climbing classification when the Tour was rolling over hills. Tomorrow the race goes to the mountains and Jérôme Pineau still has a few tricks up his sleeve.

“I’ll try to slip into the escape tomorrow, but I know it will be a lottery. Yet it is the only way for me to keep this jersey. It will not be a big deal if I ever have to lose the polka-dot jersey going to Rousses. Before the race, I said that it would be nice to spend a week with the polka-dot jersey, and it is already done.
“Now, I have yet to win a stage and that’s what I’ll try to do tomorrow. One stage victory of the Tour of France it is something people remember, while a few days in the polka-dot jersey… we forget that quickly. This morning I spoke with Richard Virenque, and he also advised me to go on the attack tomorrow morning. That’s what I plan on doing, and I will not surrender easily."

As the instigator of the escape group of three, Mathieu Perget was awarded the ‘Fighting Spirit’ award. He and two others – Ruben Perez Moreno and Sebastian Lang – spent 217km at the front of the race….

“This morning we had the instruction to try to slip in the breakaway, as we did yesterday with José Ivan Gutierrez. Although we were expecting a sprint finish, it’s still a stage to try. On a stage of 230 kilometers, on a slightly hilly course with a little wind, you never know what can happen. An escape might just work. And the question of the number of riders in the break does not change much. If there were 15 teams in the break the sprinters would not let us go. If there was seven or eight of us in the move, we wouldn’t have gained more than five minutes.
“Anyway we played the game, but when we realized that Bert Grabsch was taking the lead of the peloton we knew we were in trouble: this guy is worth five like us. Still, even though we had more than 1’20’” lead with 30km to go, we did not want to concede, so we tried what we could.”

After tomorrow, it will be 21 days in the yellow jersey for Fabian Cancellara – the duration of a Tour… so what does it mean to the Swiss ‘Spartacus’?

“Of course, it’s not bad at all but it’s not the same as if I won the Tour de France because it’s something a bit different. Of course, I’ll be very proud if I can have the yellow jersey for one more day. If not, I won’t be sad. Tomorrow we start with mountains and it’ll depend on how the race will unfold. Maybe I will still have the jersey after the stage tomorrow but maybe not. I’m prepared for the next phase…”

Thor Hushovd realizes that there are several riders closing in on his lead in the green jersey competition but he’s satisfied with what he’s done so far in the Tour of 2010…

“I’m aware that my lead in the points classification is getting smaller. There are many guys getting closer and closer and if I want to win this jersey I have to do better sprints than what I’m doing at the moment.
“I’m not sure if I’ll do the same as last year and go an attack for intermediate sprint points. I’m already happy with my Tour de France – I won what is kind of like my dream stage, and I had many days in green already so I’ll take it day by day and see what happens.”

He finished 11th in the stage and gain three seconds on the rider ahead of him in the general classification and Gerraint Thomas now dares to dream of the yellow jersey. For the moment, however, he’s happy being the best young rider in the Tour de France.

“The first hundred kilometers wasn’t too bad. It rained before the start so it was a bit cooler than yesterday and I’m happy about that. It was another good day. ‘Eddy’ Boasson Hagen lost me towards the end – we got separated – but the first phase has come to an end and we head into the Alps tomorrow.
“It’s nice to pick up a few seconds on Cancellara today but I know it won’t make much of a difference… we’ll wait and see tomorrow. It would be nice if he got dropped of sat up or something but it’s going to be tough. I’ll be hard to stay with the front group but I’ll try and do that and hopefully put a bit of time into him. Maybe I’ll stand on the podium with the yellow jersey… that’d be cool, wouldn’t it? Just being within a shout of it is massive for me. I came to this Tour to have a go in the prologue and then look after Brad and it’s been a crazy first week. I never would have dreamt of this happening. I’m happy to be in the position I am.
“We’ll go out tomorrow, see what the plan is – what Sean [Yates] and the other think – and we’ll attack the race and see what happens. Just to stay with the front is going to be tough but I’ll take it as it comes.”

“It was a hard stage actually, up and down all day long. It was incredible to win today, you’re not going to shut me up – I’ve got a lot of talking to do and I missed out on saying all of what I wanted to yesterday.
“It was harder than what most of us expected it to be. Special mention to a couple of guys on my team, Maxime Monfort and Bert Grabsch, we had to give Kanstantsin a rest today because he’s got work to do in the mountains for Mick Rogers. It was a long, hard slog for our guys but they rode incredibly well. They kept the gap down and then it was a case of everybody jumping in at the end.
“We knew it was going to happen, we knew it was going to be a tactical last climb but it played in our favor a little bit because it stopped us having to follow the chase at the end and we were able to just infiltrate into the lead-out. That was good, it was different to what we normally do.
“I just followed Mark [Renshaw] as usual and it was just a case of finishing off the incredible work that my team-mates did.
“We’re a team and I’m just a part of what’s functions like a great machine. Yeah, I’m just the guy who crosses the line with my hands in the air… but that’s the goal of cycling, to display the logo sponsors. And we’ve got to figure out the best way to do that and one way is to win bunch sprints. I’ve got to finish off the work that they do, and it’s an incredible machine to be part of.
“I don’t know where I stand with the green jersey. It’s still far off but I’ll just plug away. We’ll try and win stages and see what happens. After the mix-ups of the first few days, it put us on the back foot and we’ll do what we normally do and I’ll see how I go.”