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Monday's stage 3 is another test for the sprinters

By Justin Davis, AFP
Published: Jul. 5, 2009

Britain's Mark Cavendish is likely to find out the real strength in depth of his rivals on the Tour de France in the race's third stage from Marseille to La Grande Motte on Monday.

The key to Cavendish's four stage wins from the bunch sprints last year, apart from his unstoppable top end speed, was the disciplined riding of his Columbia team who helped crank up the speed before unleasing him a few hundred meters from the line.

On Monday Cavendish will find out if sprint rivals Thor Hushovd, Tom Boonen
and Tyler Farrar, among others, have learned anything from those performances
that will help them grab a share of the spoils this time round.

Hushovd, for one, was defiant prior to the start of the Tour, the Norwegian
declaring: "We're scared of no-one."

His Australian teammate at Cervelo, Brett Lancaster, acknowledges that Cavendish, even without his team's help, could still dominate the sprint stages on the race.

But the 29-year-old Lancaster, a former Olympic team pursuit champion, believes the Tour new boys have a quartet of riders whose own sprint train
can cause problems for Cavendish's Columbia team.

"We are talking about a group of guys who are very quick in myself, Hayden Roulston, Heinrich (Haussler) and Thor," he told AFP.

"From my perspective I have plenty of experience from the Giro, when you
combine all this experience, I think we can pull it off."

He added: "It's the same problem for all the teams, because 'Cav' is very
fast, it's a question of how you beat Cavendish.

"There is a certain speed riders can go to, so people can push up and then
drop off at the right point, so Cavendish has to push all the time.

"But even if you didn't have the best train in the world, I think if you threw him in there on his own, he'd still win sprints that guy, because he can win on his own.

"It's going to be an interesting three weeks."

In what is a mixed week of racing in the first week Monday's third stage is
tailor-made for a sprint finish.

Although undulating in the first half as it winds its way over the Bouches du Rhone south of Avignon, once it hits Arles with 78 km to go it's almost pancake flat.

That means a late breakaway will have few chances of escaping the peloton's
clutches, with the sprinters' teams likely to drive the pace from there to the
finish.

It's of no coincidence that the finish line is at the end of a 880 meter home straight, virtually inviting the sprinters to battle it out for victory.