Cavendish wins stage; Gerrans retains yellow

Britain’s Mark Cavendish celebrates as he crosses the finish line at the end of the 228.5-km fifth stage of the 100th edition of the Tour de France cycling race between Cagnes-sur-Mer and Marseille, southern France, yesterday. (AFP)

AFP/MarseilleBritain’s Mark Cavendish won a crash-marred fifth stage of the Tour de France yesterday as Australian Simon Gerrans retained the race leader’s yellow jersey. Cavendish, of the Omega-Pharma team, finished over a bike length ahead of Edvald Boasson Hagen (Sky) and Slovakian Peter Sagan (Cannondale) in a reduced bunch sprint after they had avoided a crash inside the final kilometre. It was the Isle of Man rider’s 24th stage win on the race. "I’m super happy. Now the pressure’s kind of off for me and hopefully it has started the ball rolling," Cavendish said.On what was the second-longest stage (228.5 kilometres) of the 100th edition the peloton gave the green light to an early six-man breakaway which formed in the opening kilometres after Belgian Thomas De Gendt had gone on the attack. By the 37km mark they had built a maximum lead of nearly 13 minutes on the main peloton, which only really decided to start the chase with a little over 100km remaining. With Gerrans in the race leader’s yellow jersey, Orica-GreenEdge spent long spells leading the bunch but with a stage win on a flat home straight up for grabs the other teams with top sprinters soon began sending riders to the front to boost the chase. Sixty kilometres from the finish the lead had halved to just over six minutes and 10km further on the lead group was split in two as De Gendt, Yukiya Arashiro and Alexey Lutsenko — a former under-23 world champion who is making his race debut with Astana — left their companions behind. Not wanting to miss out on contending a possible stage win, Arashiro’s Europcar teammate Kevin Reza, also a race debutant, dug deep to bridge the gap. The quartet’s lead over the main bunch, however, had been trimmed to 5:05 with 40km to race as riders from Argos, Lotto, and Omega-Pharma joined Orica in the hunt. Attempts to pull clear at the front by Reza and then Arashiro came to nothing and despite a tough headwind on the Gineste climb the escapees appeared to have little chance of keeping the pack at bay. It was on the Gineste, whose summit was 12 km from the finish, that a crash in the chasing bunch took down around a dozen riders. The incident left no visible casualties but delayed a number of riders including German Marcel Kittel, the winner of stage one, and Orica’s main sprinter Matt Goss. The main peloton crested the summit only 19secs in arrears and despite Lutsenko taking Reza with him with an ambitious attack the pair were reeled in in succession with 4km to go. The Lotto team of German sprinter Andre Greipel took command of the race inside the final kilometre after a crash further behind had stopped much of the peloton in its tracks. Greipel, however, could only finish fifth as Cavendish made his move inside the final 250 metres to claim his first win of this year’s race.NADA contacts Ullrich after doping confession

Germany’s National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) said yesterday it has contacted former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich in the wake of last month’s doping confession to find out more details. In an interview with German magazine Focus, Ullrich, 39, who won the 1997 Tour, admitted to doping with the help of jailed Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, but insisted using no other substance than his own blood. “We want to know exactly what it was,” said NADA board member Lars Mortsiefer at the presentation of their annual report in Berlin, while adding that NADA was hoping to speak to Ullrich in the next few weeks. After drawing plenty of criticism for his confession, Ullrich has said he was “surprised and finds it a pity that my words have caused such a fuss”, but Germany was made to wait a long time for his admission. Ullrich was found guilty of a doping offence by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in February 2012 and was retroactively banned from August of that year with all results gained since May 2005 erased.The German was also barred from the 2006 Tour de France amid speculation he had used illegal substances and retired from cycling in February 2007, denying he had ever cheated.