Tour of California: Mark Cavendish wins stage 5

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Mark Cavendish (Etixx-Quickstep) claimed his third win of the 2015 Tour of California Thursday, topping a rainy stage into Santa Clarita over Zico Waeytens (Giant-Alpecin) and Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo).

Toms Skujins (Hincapie Racing) avoided a late-race crash to keep his yellow leader's jersey going into Friday’s 10.6km revised time trial, which had to be moved from Big Bear Lake to Santa Clarita due to forecasts for inclement weather in the mountains.

Cavendish claimed his third win of the week and his eighth career win in California by sweeping past a Drapac rider and using his high-end speed to hold off the challengers.

In the post-race press conference, a still-shivering Cavendish thanked his teammates for the hard work they've put in all week, and he also complimented the Hincapie team for the ay they’ve defended Skujins' yellow jersey.

"To be fair, today I can't say that we're the only team that did it," Cavendish said of the chase to bring back the breakaway. "The past couple of days the Hincapie team have been pretty phenomenal controlling the race.

"They really have been so strong the last few days that the peloton's been lined out the whole day. So we've just had to swap guys from day to day. We used Yves Lampaert and Martin Velits yesterday, and today and Today Stijn [Vanedbergh]. Stijn is big and he's strong, and he can just go all day. Superb teammate. Committed, as were all of them."

There was a huge downpour in the final of the stage today (Getty Images)

How it unfolded

Friday's 154km stage from the beach front town of Santa Barbara inland to Santa Clarita included two intermediate sprints and four categorised climbs.

Danilo Wyss (BMC Racing), Alex Howes (Cannondale-Garmin), Javier Megias Leal (Novo Nordisk), Lachlan Morton (Jelly Belly-Maxxis) and Geoffrey Curran (Axeon Cycling) sneaked away from the group in the early, undulating kilometres and started building their advantage.

The quintet worked well together and had a gap of just over two minutes when Chris Butler (team SmartStop) jumped out of the group with about 70km remaining and started to bridge.

With 52km remaining, Butler was just a minute behind the breakaway, but the field was still just 30 seconds behind him. Butler defied the odds and use his climbing prowess to make it into the break, adding one more engine to the escapee's train.

In the field, Etixx-QuickStep lent a hand to HIncapie, and the advantage up front slowly started to come back down, making another bunch gallop look inevitable. Wyss sensed the catch with about 5km remaining and attacked the group, but his move was short lived as Team Sky's Danny Pate drove the pace, and the peloton flew into Santa Clarita together.

A crash with about 6km to go interrupted the run in to the finish, and a group of about 40 approached the line together. Drapac came to the front in the final kilometres, no doubt hoping to get Wouter Wippert the win after he finished second to Sagan the day before.

But Cavendish sling-shotted off the Drapac leadout with Sagan on his wheel waiting to pounce. The Solovakian didn't have the speed to get by Cavendish in the long finishing straight, however, and Cavendish took his third win of the week. Waeytens also slipped past Sagan into the runner-up spot.

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