Cavendish misses out on Tour de France record but Yates keeps yellow jersey
Mark Cavendish missed out on surpassing a record he shares with Eddy Merckx for Tour de France stage wins today.
In the first real sprinting opportunity of this year’s Tour de France, Cavendish was in the mix right until the finish but could only finish sixth.
He and Merckx are level on 34 stage wins.
Jasper Philipsen won stage three – between Amorebieta-Etxano to Bayonne as the tour entered France for the first time this year.
Cavendish sixth, Yates leads
Phil Bauhaus and Caleb Ewan completed the podium while Fabio Jakobsen and Wout van Aert made up the five rider who finished ahead of Cavendish.
Cavendish – who rides for Astana Qazaqstan Team – will have another chance to be the solo record holder on Tuesday with the tour running a second consecutive sprinting stage.
Elsewhere, Brit Adam Yates retained the yellow jersey he won against his brother on the opening stage and leads the general classification by six seconds.
Tadej Pogacar is six seconds behind Yates with the leader’s twin Simon also six seconds back.
“It was a nice day – for us it was more about recovering a little bit, as much as possible,” leader Yates said. “It’s not an easy thing to do in the Tour de France so every chance we get to recover we will, and today was one of those days.
“So we took it easy and even in the sprint at the end we tried to stay back, stay out of the crashes and all the carnage and I think we did a good job.
“The first sprint day is always tense but actually it’s quite nice, the roads the last few days have been really nice – wide roads, not a crazy amount of furniture, and it definitely helps to limit the crashes and the carnage.”