Wearing the green jersey, Mark Cavendish added his second win to his tally (pic fotoreporter sirotti)

Mark Cavendish made it two in a row as he sprinted to his second win of the 2009 Tour de France, on a stage that didn’t at all follow the usual script.

Under the glaring heat of the sun four riders got into an early break on the 196.5km route from Marseille to La Grande-Motte, who managed to stay away until 30km to go. At its biggest the margin was some 13 minutes, but the Saxo-Bank team wasn’t going to allow them to stay out front all the way.

With the wind blowing hard across the roads, the all nine of the Columbia-HTC team used a lull in the pace to ride away from the main peloton, joined by yellow jersey holder Fabian Cancellara, Lance Armstrong, Thor Hushovd and Gerald Ciolek and of course Mark Cavendish. With the Columbia-HTC riders working hard at front, helped by the Skils-Shimano and at later on several Astana riders, the margin back to the chasing peloton reached 30 seconds.

Caught napping, GC contenders Alberto Contador and Cadel Evans were forced to rue the missed break and despite some hard chasing by the Silence-Lotto and Garmin-Slipstream riders, a mostly disorganised chase failed to bring the break back.

There’ll certainly be an interesting conversation at the Astana dinner table.