Tour of Qatar: Cavendish wins final stage and overall

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There was an air of inevitability about proceedings on the final day of the Tour of Qatar at Doha Corniche, as Mark Cavendish swooped to his fourth stage win in succession to seal overall victory. It was the second stage race victory of Cavendish's career, after his Ster ZLM Toer triumph last year, and his bountiful Qatari campaign augurs well for his prospects at his new team, Omega Pharma-QuickStep.

Though Cavendish rattled off his winning sprint with typical authority and finished with a healthy 25-second buffer over Brent Bookwalter (BMC) in the general classification, however, his day was not without incident. The golden jersey was among the fallers in a crash inside the opening 15 kilometres, but he quickly recovered and paced back to the peloton in the company of Matteo Trentin.

"I tweeted beforehand that I've won on this stage before, and I've crashed on this stage before, but in fact I did both today," Cavendish joked afterwards. "We came to a roundabout and I was on Brent Bookwalter's wheel. I don't know what happened, but I was behind him, and I went over him."

Cavendish sat out the first intermediate sprint - won by Taylor Phinney (BMC) ahead of Bernhard Eisel (Sky) - as he assessed the extent of his injuries, but once Omega Pharma-QuickStep took up the reins at the head of the peloton, it soon became apparent that it would be a case of business as usual in the finale. "I was a bit banged up but I'm alright now," he said later.

Omega Pharma-QuickStep's fast tempo discouraged attacks on the run-in to Doha, with only a short-lived move sparked by Yaroslav Popovych (RadioShack-Leopard) gaining any sort of traction. Although the BMC trio of Greg Van Avermaet, Phinney and Adam Blythe snaffled the bonuses at the second intermediate sprint, the 10 laps of the finishing circuit along Doha's Corniche were ultimately simply the prelude to the ineluctable bunch finish.

Once again, Cavendish's remarkable ability to analyse the minute details of sprint finales was a cornerstone of his victory. A winner here in 2009, Cavendish was aware that the road curved gently to the right inside the final 500 metres, and he was happy to leave it late to jockey forward on the outside.

"Our guys were used up but I wasn't that bothered because you could kind of go it alone," Cavendish said of the sprint. "I knew the road was going to bend to the right so I left it late and used the other lead-outs to move up in the last few hundred metres on the left hand side."

Cavendish still faced a stiff challenge from Yauheni Hutarovich (Ag2r-La Mondiale) and Barry Markus (Vacansoleil-DCM) in the final 200 metres. Markus, in particular, was closing quickly and the Dutch youngster explained afterwards that he had started his sprint from much further back than he would have liked. "I was second on two other stages but I think this was my strongest sprint this week," he said.

Even so, Cavendish was ultimately a comfortable winner of the finishing sprint, just as he was an emphatic winner of the final general classification. The 10-second time bonus for first place extended his margin over Brent Bookwalter to 25 seconds, while Phinney and Blythe came home third and fourth overall. Bernhard Eisel (Sky) impressed throughout the week and took fifth place on GC, but the story of the race was the dominance of his former teammate Cavendish.

"I'm over the moon," said Cavendish. "I could come here every year with Tom Boonen and I'd be pretty much guaranteed the overall, but the guys here, they were incredible, they worked really hard. I'm proud I can bring this home to the team again, it's the sixth time they've won the Tour of Qatar overall. I'm really happy to be part of it."

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