2011 Tour de France, Stage 7

Mark Cavendish (HTC-Highroad) won his 17th Tour de France stage finishing ahead Alessandro Petacchi (Lampre-ISD) and André Greipel (Omega Pharma) in Châteauroux, the same town in which Cavendish won his first TdF stage in 2008.

Petacchi covered the last 1500 meters following Cavendish and his perfectly functioning train, then tried to overtake him until the final meters. This is the comment by Petacchi: "Second place is very good considering that in the previous stages I could not even take part in the critical moments of the sprints. Today, I was in the best place. Mark was great because he performed impressively keeping a top speed for so many meters".

The stage had some crashes that resulted in serious consequences. GC contender Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) is out of the race with a broken collarbone. Chris Horner (RadioShack) was involved in the same crash and finished 12 minutes down and appeared confused at the end of the stage. Teammate Levi Leipheimer also crashed and finished 3.06 down, the second day in a row he lost time due to crashes.

Top 10 GC:
1 Thor Hushovd (Nor) Team Garmin-Cervelo 28:29:27
2 Cadel Evans (Aus) BMC Racing Team 0:00:01
3 Fränk Schleck (Lux) Leopard Trek 0:00:04
4 David Millar (GBr) Team Garmin-Cervelo 0:00:08
5 Andreas Klöden (Ger) Team RadioShack 0:00:10
6 Jakob Fuglsang (Den) Leopard Trek 0:00:12
7 Andy Schleck (Lux) Leopard Trek
8 Tony Martin (Ger) HTC-Highroad 0:00:13
9 Peter Velits (Svk) HTC-Highroad
10 Robert Gesink (Ned) Rabobank Cycling Team 0:00:20

The best placed Italians, and moving up slowly on GC, are:
15 Ivan Basso (Ita) Liquigas-Cannondale 0:01:03
19 Damiano Cunego (Ita) Lampre - ISD 0:01:12

Alberto Contador, 24th, is at 0:01:42.

In stage 8 the road goes UP.

Photo: Bettini

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