Mark Cavendish celebrated his fourth TDF 2011 win when he won the fifteenth stage of the Tour De France this afternoon.
Today was a flatter 193km stage from Limoux which was staging Le Tour for the first time to the 260,000 population city of Montpellier, the eighth largest city in France.
There were clouds and rain for the riders who set off down the D104 with FDJ's Mickael Delage on the attack as soon as the stage started for real. Delage was soon caught up by Niki Terpstra (Quick Step), Samuel Dumoulin (Cofidis), Mikhail Ignatiev (Katusha) and Anthony Delaplace (Saur Sojasun).
Mikhail Ignatiev won the point on the only climb of the day on the Côte de Villespassans. Delage took the sprint at Montagnac with Mark Cavendish adding ten more points to his Green Jersey tally.
Niki Terpstra was ahead but the peleton caught up with him in Montpellier to set up a bunch sprint.
Mark Cavendish went, lead out by Mark Renshaw and the rest of his team and timed his run to perfection to win the stage in a time of four hours, 20 mins and 24 seconds ahead of Farrar and Petacchi. Team Sky's Ben Swift was sixth.
Thomas Voeckler keeps his yellow jersey.
"It's not me, it's my team that really made this victory possible," Cavendish said afterwards to the HTC Press Office. "Right from the start, all nine riders did a great job today and after a few very hard days in the mountains, that's not so easy."
"I was tired after the Pyrenees too, but I use different muscles for sprinting than for climbing, so I was ok."
"It was a difficult stage, with lots of attacks at the end but my team kept control of things. Without them my win wouldn't have happened."
As for the green jersey, Cavendish said "I'll keep trying and see what I can do. Hopefully I'll be able to take it all the way to Paris."
Tomorrow is a rest day in the Drome Department before the 16th stage from Saint Paul Trois Chateux to Gap.
Picture credit ©Pool/Tim De Waele