Cavendish drew on first pro race for Tour de France stage victory

After being hit by crashes, illness and disappointment over the opening four days, Omega Pharma-QuickStep's Tour de France took a big upward swing when Mark Cavendish won today's stage into Marseille. The British sprinter was full of praise for his teammates, revealing they all derived confidence from their performance in yesterday's team time trial in Nice, which indicated the team's Tour was on track even as they missed out on victory by less than a second.

Peter Cossins has written about professional cycling since 1993 and is a contributing editor to Procycling. He is the author of The Monuments: The Grit and the Glory of Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races (Bloomsbury, March 2014) and has translated Christophe Bassons' autobiography, A Clean Break (Bloomsbury, July 2014). 

twitter.com/petercossins