Tour of California: Cavendish makes it two in Lodi

Mark Cavendish (Etixx-QuickStep) claimed his second consecutive stage of the Tour of California on Monday, topping Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) again in the bunch sprint in Lodi. Wouter Wippert (Drapac) hit out first but faded to third as the two world-class sprinters locked horns.

"[Sagan] came underneath me in the last corner, and it was perfect, Cavendish said. "With the pressure he’s under he would hit out early, so I was happy to come off his wheel. He actually did a good job of boxing me in so I had to really start the sprint late."

Cavendish's win further extended his race lead, now at eight seconds over Sagan, with breakaway rider Robin Carpenter (Hincapie Racing) moving into third thanks to his three time bonuses on the stage.

A massive crash with 10km to go disrupted the peloton. Warren Barguil (Giant-Alpecin), one of the pre-race favourites, lost major time, and Ben Jacques-Maynes (Jamis-Hagens Berman), who was riding in his last race after starting all 10 editions of the Tour of California, had to abandon with a dislocated shoulder and facial lacerations.

Carpenter’s breakaway, which also included Daniel Oss (BMC Racing) Markel Irizar (Trek Factory Racing) and Luis Amaran (Jamis-Hagens Berman) nearly stuck their escape all the way to the line, even after Amaran lost contact on the first of two 3.6km circuits in Lodi.

Cavendish said a lack of time checks in the last half of the stage added a level of confusion about how much of an advantage the breakaway had, forcing him to throw extra riders into the chase when they finally found out what the gap was.

"For about 70-80km we didn’t have a time check," Cavendish said. "We thought it was coming down but it was still four minutes with 30km to go.

"I don’t know where the motorbike was with the time check. One of the big things about the debate about not having radios in the race we need to know the time checks, and we didn’t know and it was almost game over."

The added horsepower in the chase left QuickStep with only Cavendish, Mark Renshaw, Matteo Trentin and Juilian Alaphilippe for the finale.

"That’s not easy on the finish circuits,” Cavendish said. “But they did a brilliant job, and then Tinkoff-Saxo came to take over in the last kilometre."

How it unfolded

Monday's 193.7km second stage started out lumpy and twisty on narrow rural roads. The riders contested three intermediate sprints and one KOM before the route flattened out for a slightly downhill run to the finish in Lodi.

As with the opening stage, a breakaway of four riders animated the day's racing. The move started when Daniel Oss (BMC Racing) and Markel Irizar (Trek Factory Racing) sneaked away from the bunch first, with Luis Amaran (Jamis-Hagens Berman) and Robin Carpenter (Hincapie Racing) bridging up to the move 28km into the stage.

The quartet had a gap of four minutes at the first intermediate sprint of the day at 40km, where Carpenter took the win and the three-second time bonus.

The gap went up to 5:10 about 75km into the stage, and Etixx-QuickStep controlled the front. After doing much of the work to bring back the breakaway to get the stage 1 win, QuickStep no doubt was expecting some of the other teams to come forward on Monday.

As the gap began to come down, Cavendish called for a nature break when it was at three minutes, possibly signaling to the other sprinters' teams that they wouldn't be getting a free ride on stage 2.

The QuickStep sprinter had a conversation in the bunch with Sagan after taking a dig at the Tinkoff rider's team in the stage 1 post-race press conference, but Cavendish said his team did the bulk of the chasing again today.

“Tinkoff did some at the end and MTN,” he said. “But it was already when the gap had come down a lot. It was almost touch and go whether we were get them.”

The gap came down below three minutes with 25km to go. The advantage was down to one minute with 12km remaining, and once again a bunch kick was inevitable.

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