Mark Cavendish has taken a second victory at the Tour de France, and the 32nd of his career, after a somewhat sketchy bunch sprint at the end of stage 6 today into Châteauroux.
The British rider lost the wheel of his Deceuninck-QuickStep lead-out man, Michael Mørkøv, in the final 300 metres and so jumped onto the Alpecin-Fenix lead-out effort, which was stronger.
Tim Merlier was leading out Jasper Philipsen, with Cavendish getting onto Philipsen's wheel and then coming around them, as Merlier was still on the front.
However, as he overtook the Alpecin-Fenix duo Cavendish moved to his left and that impeded Merlier significantly and also hamper Philipsen a little, causing him to stop pedaling for a moment right in the middle of the sprint.
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Cavendish, in the green jersey of points classification leader, crossed the line with his two arms in the air. Philipsen was in 2nd place and raised one arm in a half-hearted protest gesture at the manner of his rival's winning sprint.
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Nacer Bouhanni (Arkéa Samsic) was 3rd, Arnaud Démare (Groupama-FDJ) was 4th, Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe) was 5th and Cees Bol (Team DSM) placed 6th.
The honours came down to a bunch sprint after several large breakaways got away but were caught long before the finish, except for Greg Van Avermaet (AG2R Citroën) and Roger Kluge (Lotto Soudal).
Those two riders were only caught with just over 2km to go, which set up the big bunch sprint for the third time on the race. Cavendish adds his win today to the victory he took on stage 4.
As the race ended in a bunch sprint, after 160.4km of racing, there was no changed in the overall; Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin Fenix) still leading by eight seconds from Tadej Pogačar (UAE-Team Emirates).
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