Again confirming his sprinter agility, Brit Mark Cavendish won stage two of the Eneco Tour in Belgium.

The win is his eighth of the season and another notable achievement in a ProTour race – the highest tier event on the professional road racing calendar. The win means Cavendish has now equalled Robbie McEwen’s mark of eight wins in his debut professional season and now has Alessandro Petacchi’s record of 11 in sight.

An early breakaway was eventually caught by the peleton with 10km to go, setting up the race for an inevitable bunch sprint finish. With the finishing line in sight, the Manxman used the Quickstep team’s train to position himself perfectly for the final push and powered past Fred Rodriguez (Predictor-Lotto) and Wouter Weylandt (Quickstep) to take a memorable win and further confirm his position as one of the world’s most exciting young riders.

Cavendish said: “My team-mates led me perfectly through the last corner and when I’m in the top three in the last 200 metres of a sprint, there’s not many people out there can beat me. It’s my eighth season win, now I want to get 11 victories like Petacchi.”