Stage 7

The road

At the start

Châteauroux, where Cavendish began

Sky took their first ever Tour stage yesterday through Edvald Boasson Hagen, and Johnny Hoogerland has the mountains jersey. Thor Hushovd keeps yellow, one second up on Cadel Evans and four on Fränk Schleck. Today runs long and flat to Châteauroux, the town where Mark Cavendish won the first of his sixteen Tour stages three years ago. The roads are open, the wind is due to swing behind them, and the bunch is jumpy.

How it was won

1. 148 km to go

   The wind swings behind

   A crosswind becomes a tailwind, the speed jumps and the nerves jump with it. A handful go down on the right-hand edge of the road and Kreuziger, Popovych and Gallopin have to chase hard to get back on.

2. 240 km to go

   Wiggins's collarbone

   Then the big one, in the middle of the bunch, with forty kilometres to run. Dozens go down — Farrar, Vinokourov, Leipheimer, Horner — but the one who does not get up is Bradley Wiggins, sitting on the verge cradling his left shoulder. He abandons with a broken collarbone, and Britain's general classification hope is over in an afternoon.

3. 326 km to go

   Buzançais

   The four leaders take the intermediate sprint, Delage jumping off Meersman's ferocious pace. Less than a minute later Cavendish produces a flash of speed for fifth ahead of Rojas — riding, it turns out, with the binding of his shoe ripped open and only just refastened.

4. 4At the line

   Châteauroux, again

   Greipel opens from two hundred metres down the right of the wide finishing boulevard. Cavendish moves out from behind Renshaw on the left, accelerates once, and is never in danger. Seventeenth Tour stage, in the town where he won his first.

The result