Tour de France Daily – Cavendish Wins the Stage as Evans' Win Confirmed

Today's stage: The final stage. As usual, a short stage finishing on the Champs-Elysees expected to finish in a bunch sprint.

Who won the stage? Mark Cavendish (HTC-High Road) took his fifth stage win of this year's Tour in a bunch sprint and also confirmed his victory in the Green Jersey points competition.

What matters in the GC race? Nothing, as is the usual on this stage. Cadel Evans (BMC) won the race with his time trial performance yesterday.

What matters in the other competitions?

Green Jersey (Best Sprinter): Cavendish also was the leader from the peloton at the intermediate sprint. JJ Rojas (Movistar) finished second and Philippe Gilbert (Omega-Pharma Lotto) finished third.

Polka Dot Jersey (King of the Mountains): Sammy Sanchez (Euskatel) won this competition on Alpe d'Huez the other day. Andy Schleck (Leopard-Trek) was second.

White Jersey (best young rider): Pierre Rolland (Europcar) took the lead with his stage win atop Alpe d'Huez and then held on in the time trial, holding off Rein Taaramae (Cofidis).

Biggest surprise: No surprises. The stage today played out exactly as suspected. Break would go once on Champs-Elysees. Then break would get caught near the end. Then Cavendish would beat the other sprinters easily.

Biggest disappointment: Rojas didn't contest the finishing sprint. He just kind of gave up on it knowing he couldn't win the finsl sprint or overtake Cavendish without a big mistake from Cavendish or his team.

Other items of note: Jeremy Roy (FDJ) was awarded the most combative rider of the race. It had to be either him or teammate Mikael Delage considering the amount of time both spent in breakaways during the race. Heck Roy was even in the break on the Champs-Elysees today, after his place was confirmed.

What is coming next? Tomorrow I will have a review of the entire race. Then, as far as cycling goes, we have a bit of a break before the next big race: the three-week long Vuelta a Espana starting August 20. Igor Anton (Euskatel) will be among the favorites as will two time champion Denis Menchov (Geox-TMC). The rest is unknown until we know who of the GC guys from various teams will be riding the race and also who will be riding the race for results and who will be riding as training for September's World Championships.