Cavendish takes sprint victory in Indicatore

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Mark Cavendish (Sky) claimed another mass sprint, taking the win on the second stage of Tirreno-Adriatico in Indicatore. The reigning world champion held off an oncoming Oscar Freire (Katusha), with Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Barracuda), who had opened the sprint, finishing third.

Matt Goss, whose GreenEdge team won yesterday's team time trial, retained the blue leader's jersey in Tirreno-Adriatico's first road stage.

Farrar had a strong lead-out by teammate Robbie Hunter and when the recently crowned South African road champion pulled off Farrar kicked into high gear. Cavendish shadowed Farrar, however, and easily came around the Garmin-Barracuda sprinter to go into the lead, but Freire nearly surprised everyone when he squeezed up on the righthand side to take a close second.

With the victory, Cavendish becomes the first reigning world champion to win a stage of Tirreno-Adriatico since 2005, an honour last achieved by none other than today's runner-up Oscar Freire.

The closing sprint was spoiled by a mid-field crash within the final two kilometers which stopped approximately two-thirds of the peloton. Several Colombia-Coldeportes riders were involved, as was Michele Scarponi (Lampre-ISD). Michael Matthews (Rabobank) was among the injured and had to be taken to hospital.

Race leader Matt Goss was caught up in the crash, but did not hit the pavement. “A lot of our guys were blocked. Goss wasn’t involved in the crash, but he got checked by another rider,” said GreenEdge sports director Matt White.  “We’re lucky that we got through that crash unscathed. The sprint didn’t work out for ‘Gossy’ today, but that’s sprinting. Tomorrow’s another day.”

It was Cavendish's fourth win of the young season and his first ever in Tirreno-Adriatico.  “Everyone is really happy with that. It was an exciting finish and hard to control with some short climbs in the final,” said sports director Servais Knaven. “There were a few attacks and then the last 3km was descending which meant the pace was really high.

“It was not easy to be in the right position to make a sprint but the guys worked together perfectly and made a great lead-out for Cav.”

It wasn't the top step of the podium for Freire, but he was pleased anyway, declaring himself  “quite satisfied” with the day.  “In the final sprint I tried to do my best, but Cavendish slipstreamed Farrar, the man who opened the sprint. That gave him great speed and I wasn't able to close the gap. Anyways, it's another good result which gives me strong motivation to fight for a win during the next days."

A dynamic duo's long day on the attack

The 230km stage got off to an early start under sunshine in San Vincenzo. Diego Caccia (Farnese Vini-Sella Italia) took off immediately after the official start and was soon joined by Stefano Pirazzi (Colnago-CSF Inox).

Their gap quickly sky-rocketed to 7:50, moving GreenEdge to start the chase on the first of the day's two climbs to prevent things from getting dangerously out of control.

The gap came down to the six-minute mark and stayed there, as the rest of the peloton was happy to leave the chase work to the new Australian ProTeam. With Canadian road and time trial champion Svein Tuft (GreenEdge) at the head of the peloton tapping out the tempo, the break's advantage dropped to five minutes by the time the leading duo topped the second climb.

The sprinters had their eye on the finish in Indicatore, and the gap was dropping too slowly for their taste. With 80km still to go Sky and Omega Pharma-QuickStep moved to the front and helped bring things closer together. GreenEdge moved back into the lead when the gap dropped to four minutes with some 75km to go.

The stage concluded with two laps of a 33.4km circuit in Indicatore and as the break rolled through to see two laps to go their lead stood at 4:40. By the time they completed their first lap of the circuit their advantage had plummeted to 52 seconds, largely due to the efforts of GreenEdge's Svein Tuft, and Pirazzi's and Caccia's 200km stint off the front soon came to the expected conclusion with 29km remaining.

GreenEdge kept the pace high, as the sprinters lined up behind them, but control of the field changed as the finish line drew closer. Sky took up the reins and moved in to take over the work at the head of the peloton.

Yaroslav Popovych (RadioShack-Nissan) tried to get away with 9km to go, and he was joined and then passed by Astana's Enrico Gasparotto, who himself was then joined by Fabio Taborre (Acqua & Sapone). But the Sky train stayed on track and hunted them down some two kilometers later, with Rabobank and RadioShack-Nissan jumping in as the British team seemed to lose the thread.

With 3km to go, Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) and Paolo Tiralongo (Astana) attacked over the top of a rise, but they, too, were caught on the ensuing mild descent. A big crash in the middle of the field split the peloton at 1.7 km to go, leaving a group of approximately 40 riders to contest the sprint.

Garmin-Barracuda led the charge under the 1km marker for Farrar, but Cavendish moved up in the last few hundred meters to pass his American rival with a perfectly-timed sprint. Freire closed the gap to the Manxman but the Katusha rider's acceleration came too late to slip past Cavendish.