Mark Cavendish powered to Columbia-Highroad’s third straight stage win in the Giro d’Italia  on Sunday.  The young Columbia-Highroad rider’s victory in the heart of Milan immediately follows Columbia-Highroad’s victories on Friday with Edvald Boasson Hagen and on Saturday with Konstantin Sivtsov.  

In a textbook final lead-out, Cavendish’s teammate Boasson Hagen upped the pace in the last kilometre, and then Mark Renshaw increased the speed even further.  Finally with 250 metres to go, Cavendish powered away to take his ninth win of the season and 37th of his career.  It is also his third Giro d’Italia stage win in just two participations, and win number 25 for Columbia-Highroad men’s team this season.
“This is the stage I was really targeting,” Cavendish said afterwards.  “I messed up the first sprint [on stage two of the race] but I’ve made up for it today.  There’s a limited number of sprints in this year’s Giro, so I wanted this one really badly.  I got a perfect lead-out from my teammates, we added an extra rider in the final kilometres and that gave us a bit more speed for the last 1000 metres.”  Cavendish added, “Edvald [Boasson Hagen] did a great turn to five hundred metres and then Mark [Renshaw] took me to about 250 to go.  Then I just went for it to make sure nobody came past me.”

“Mark really wanted to win in Milan and at the Giro. He always wants to win and this time we got it right,” added team manager Bob Stapleton. “We learned from our mistakes in the first sprint and perfected the lead out train by adding another rider.  Winning three stages one after the other is what you can only really dream about, so it’s amazing to see it actually happen.  It proves a lot about the team and how we work well together and how we have a team packed with great young riders.”