Thaindian News

The third stage of the prestigious bi cycle championship, Tour De France belonged to Briton Mark Cavendish. Cavendish was declared as the winner of the third stage while former Tour De France champion, Lance Armstrong moved up to the third place, as far as overall standings are concerned.

Swiss cyclist, Fabian Cancallera, maintained the over all lead. The weather conditions pushed the competitors to the limits as the temperature rose up to 34 degree Celsius, thus creating a tough situation for the cyclists. On the top of that, a strong headwind made the situation worse for the cyclists.

Samuel Dumoulin of Cofidis and Maxime Bouete of Ag2r made an early break, and were soon joined by Koen de Kort of Skil-Shimano and Ruben Perez Moreno of Euskaltel. The two had built up a significant lead early on but with the 40 kilometers of the stage remaining, the peloton began to mount a serious challenge, closing the gap to three minutes.

Earlier, Cavendish and 25 others took advantage of the capture of the day’s break group to split the peloton just about 25 km away from the finish line. Mark Cavendish said that he was surprised to see that no other teams worked really hard in order to be in the front which would have led them to get into the break. On the other hand, hailing Cavendish, six time Tour de France green jersey winner, Eric Zabel, stated that Cavendish can turn out to be the greatest sprinter of all time.

Cavendish’s team mate, Tony Martin, climbed up to the second spot in overall standings, just 33 seconds behind Cavendish.