Cavendish bites back in Catalunya

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Mark Cavendish (HTC-Columbia) appears to have put his early season troubles behind with a victory in the second stage of the Volta a Catalunya on Tuesday afternoon.

The British sprinter had a difficult early season after a dental problem wrecked his January training but showed he on his way back by winning stage from Salt to Banyoles.

Cavendish beat Juan Jose Haedo (Saxo Bank) and Aitor Galdos (Euskaltel-Euskadi). Samuel Dumoulin (Cofidis) was fourth and Canada’s Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Transitions) was ninth.

"By this point in the season last year I had six victories. This time the year began badly and not to have won anything so far has been frustrating. But my form's been getting better and better and the team never lost faith in me," Cavendish said.

"There were a lot of teams scraping for position at the end and it was quite dangerous. But even though we've got a young squad here and they're still learning the ropes, they stayed together and gave it 100 percent. Without them I wouldn't have been able to do my sprint. I wouldn't have been there."

Directeur sportif Brian Holm insisted the team had not been under pressure to win. “We didn’t have any pressure. We’ve already won ten races but Mark has been quite ill. Everyone knew it was a matter of time before he started winning,” Holm told Cyclingnews.

“We’re happy he’s winning now and I’d say he’s at 90 per cent of his top form. You saw yesterday that he was strong in the prologue, where he got seventh.”

Milram's Paul Voß (Milram) kept the overall race lead, one second ahead of Levi Leipheimer (RadioShack). His teammate Andreas Kloden is second at two seconds. After a second full day in the leader's jersey to come, Voß admitted to Cyclingnews that he'd been pinching himself after his stage one coup on Monday.

"I didn't fully realize the magnitude of my win until this morning, when I called my mum and she told be that it was even being reported on television," he said. "After that call, about seven this morning, I tried to get back to sleep, but couldn't. I was too excited about the race today. The excitement didn't die down until I was on the bike again and the stage finally started."

The 182km stage was dominated by a breakaway by the USA's Peter Stetina (Garmin-Transitions) and Spain's Jonathan Castroviejo (Euskaltel-Euskadi).

The two young riders got way after nine kilometres and the bunch let them go for a day of glory in the Spanish sun. They carved out a lead that reached 8:30 after the Alts Els Angel climb often covered by riders based in Gerona, but were then gradually reeled in by the bunch as the sprinters' teams. Stetina was first to the summit of the climb and so secured the lead in the climber's competition. He said in a tweet: "Leading the break up climb in front of all my friends & visiting family gave me the chills! Career highlight, gave KOM flowers to mom."

They two were eventually swept up 13km from the finish after 161km away as Lampre-Farnese Vini and especially HTC-Columbia rode to set up Cavendish.