Cavendish matches Hinault’s Tour stage wins
Today’s Tour de France stage 3 started quite leisurely. Armindo Fonseca (Fortuneo-Vital Concept) was on a lone breakaway and the peloton was on a slow speed of around 35 km/h. Then the French housewives’ favourite rider, Thomas Voeckler (Direct Energie) decided to have a go and join his compatriot up ahead.
When the two of them got together they increased the gap to the peloton and that’s when the sprinters’ teams decided to push and close the gap. Voeckler had a great ride down memory lane but the peloton caught up with the escapees and shut them down with about 8 km to go.
Then it was a fight between the team trains. I was expecting Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) to win, but Andre Greipel (Lotto-Sudal) and Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data for Qhubeka) wouldn’t go down that easy. They sprinted for the line and although it seemed that Cavendish was ahead by a hair, Greipel punched the air. So, for a few minutes nobody was sure. But once it was confirmed that it was Cavendish who had won, he relaxed and celebrated.
During the TV interviews he didn’t miss the opportunity to mention that everybody had written him off, but now everybody thinks that the old Cav is back. Anyway, he is in the green jersey and he has 28 Tour de France stage wins the same as the Badger himself, Bernard Hinault. Cav actually mentioned that it’s great for him to be mentioned in the same sentence as Hinault.
Peter Sagan is still in yellow and the main GC contenders are still in the same position: Froome, Quintana, Aru 14 seconds behind yellow, Contador at 1:02 and Porte at 1:59.