Fabulous five for Cavendish

Cervelo TestTeam's Thor Hushovd may be the most consistent sprinter of the 2009 Tour de France, but any doubts about who was the best sprinter in La Grande Boucle ended Friday in Aubenas as Mark Cavendish shot home for his fifth stage win of the Tour.

There were plenty of factors which should have prevented Cavendish from winning: A 14 kilometre category two climb raced flat-out whose summit lay 16 clicks from the finish; the last of the escapees caught only 1.3 kilometres from the line; and slightl uphill in the last 500 metres could have played havoc with the sprinters' teams.

But this 96th Tour has seen the Columbia-HTC sprinter transformed; he is a far more complete rider than the one who prodigiously picked up four stages at last year's race.

"To go early with 260 metres is hard to do with a slightly uphill finish. It was one of the hardest sprints I've had to do, and it made it quite emotional at the finish," said Cavendish, who spun a smaller-than-usual gear to trounce arch-rival Hushovd into second. Gerald Ciolek (Milram), Greg Van Avermaet (Silence-Lotto) and Oscar Freire (Rabobank) completed Friday's first five.

"I've won harder stages than today – Milan-Sanremo, for instance – but after three weeks of racing, it wasn't necessarily going to be a bunch sprint. We saw Rabobank [riding for Freire] didn't think I could get over the climb; I think that's why they pulled full-gas.

"But," said Cavendish, "I told the guys in the bus this morning, ‘I'm going to give it one last go – you got to stay with me on the climb'. It was really, really grim on the climb, but I got over it. I said the top of the climb was my finish line, and anything after that was going to be a bonus."

Cav': No hard feelings, Thor

And if it hadn't been for a harsh call on behalf of the race officials last Saturday in Besançon, Cavendish – who was relegated on Stage 14 for irregular sprinting – could well be riding to Paris in the maillot vert. Instead, it's the man who finished second behind him in Aubenas, Hushovd, who will enter the French capital draped in green, an honour he's likely to keep.

Since the opening road stage, the Norwegian and the Brit have been at loggerheads in the fight for both stage victories and the points classification. The tension reached fever-pitch after the stage to Besançon, where a peeved Cavendish was reported to have told BBC Radio that Hushovd's green jersey will forever be stained. He later denied he made such a remark.

But it seemed the damage had been done. Because on the seventeenth leg to Le Grand-Bornand, Hushovd went on a rampage through the Sallanches valley and cleaned up both intermediate sprints; looking towards the TV camera after the first, he tugged at his jersey, and appeared to say, ‘It's mine, and I earned it for real'.

After his stage triumph Friday in Aubenas, a town perched on a rocky spur overlooking the Ardèche valley, Cavendish said that's water over a duck's back. "That was humiliating for me the other day [Stage 17, Wednesday] – that was a beautiful ride by Thor," Cavendish said.

"He's shown he's fought for that jersey, he's not just been put in that position. If anybody deserves to be in Paris with that, it's him. Somebody's who's fought for the jersey like that, I can't compete with that – I said it to him the other day.

"I got a bit carried away when I was in green, but I've gone back to my original plan now – I just want stage wins," said Cavendish.

He's got one more chance left.

For the GC contenders, it's all uphill from here

The final 14-kilometre climb of the Col de l'Escrinet provided a natural platform for an attack, but that was only the case for Laurent Lefevre (BBox Bouygues Telecom) and Alessandro Ballan (Lampre-NGC); the GC contenders did nothing.

There were two mitigating reasons. One, those high on the leaderboard were still tired after the previous day's time trial in Annecy and the mountainous effort before that to Le Grand-Bornand. Second, Mont Ventoux awaits.

Never before has a Tour de France finished this way, with a mountain stage following the final individual time trial. But in recent years organisers ASO has been a brainstorming lot, and already this edition, we have seen experimentation with the dispensation of race radios on one stage (originally, two were planned). So why not Ventoux after the last TT?

Despite the hype surrounding Saturday's 167 kilometre journey to ‘The Giant of Provence', Alberto Contador's maillot jaune is looking safe as houses. For the 26-year-old Spaniard to lose this Tour, complete and utter disaster would need to ensue, and from what we've seen of him so far, despite incessant speculation of in-fighting within his Astana team, that's unlikely to happen.

The five behind him on the overall classification – Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank), Lance Armstrong (Astana), Bradley Wiggins (Garmin-Slipstream) and Andréas Klöden (Astana) – now that's a different story. Those two steps in Paris are by no means decided, and won't be until they reach the Ventoux's 1,912-metre summit.

"I expect the Schleck brothers to attack. I'll focus on defending the jersey and will likely have a conservative attitude," said Contador, who finished in the second group of 27 riders on Friday's stage, four seconds behind the stage winner, Armstrong the only rider to make the first cut of 12.

Asked if he will help Armstrong stand on the Paris podium beside him, he said: "The first goal is to defend the jersey until Paris. If I can combine that goal and help the team, I will. If I can help put Lance Armstrong on the podium, I will give all I have."

Last-chance saloon for the baroudeurs (fighters)

Positioned directly after the start in Bourgoin-Jallieu, a town of 25,000 inhabitants in the heart of the Rhône-Alpes region and at the junction of the greater urban areas and Lyon and Grenoble, the 2.6-km Cat. 4 climb of Culin became the launch pad for a series of attempted escapes before 20 eventually snuck away.

There were more than a few big names in the early break, including Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto), Yaroslav Popovych (Astana), David Millar (Garmin-Slipstream), Kim Kirchen (Columbia-HTC), Luis Leon Sanchez (Caisse d'Epargne) and Sylvain Chavanel (Quick Step).

Others in the mix were Jose Luis Arrieta, Nicolas Roche and Christophe Riblon (AG2R), David Arroyo and Jose Ivan Gutierrez (Caisse d'Epargne), Leonard Duque (Cofidis), Simon Spilak (Lampre), Geoffrey Lequatre (Agritubel), Daniele Bennati (Liquigas), Stijn Vandenbergh and Nicolai Trussov (Katusha), Carlos Barredo (Quick Step), Jonathan Hivert (Skil-Shimano) and Ruben Moreno (Euskaltel-Euskadi).

60-km in, the lead group held a 2:20 advantage to the Rabobank-driven peloton, one of six teams to miss the move. Despite having 14 out of 20 teams represented, however, the escapees gained no more than three minutes' lead. With that in mind and the tough Provencal heat becoming more of a factor as the day wore on, the group began to fracture around 65-km from the finish in Aubenas, situated at the edge of the Monts d'Ardèche Regional Nature Park and home to a castle that has towered over this town of 12,000 for more than ten centuries.

Just two clicks later, just Popovych (Astana), Millar (Garmin-Slipstream), Arrieta (AG2R), Duque (Cofidis) and Gutierrez (Caisse d'Epargne) remained, the peloton at this point only 1:41 back. Skirting the tranquil Astana-blue waters of the Rhône river, the new quintet was working well but the bunch simply had too many vested interests to let them go, and when Duque was caught 31-km from Aubenas, it became a case of peloton groupé.

Onto the 14-km Cat. 2 climb of the Col de l'Escrinet, BBox Bouygues Telecom's Lefevre held a 10-second lead, joined by rainbow-striped world champion Ballan (Lampre-NGC) 4.5-km from the summit. Obstinately working against the momentum of the peloton, Lefevre and Ballan held a tenuous 13-second advantage over the top of the climb, marking 16-km left to race.

On the descent, Leon Sanchez attempted to bridge to the lead pair but without success, 12 seconds between break and bunch 10-km from the line. A desperate attempt to avoid the inevitable, Ballan, the stronger of two, was caught just 1.3-km out, before Columbia-HTC delivered Cavendish his fifth stage of the Tour.

See the full photo gallery from stage 19.