THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FLORENCE, Italy — Mark Cavendish won the 13th stage of the Giro d’Italia in a mass sprint Friday for his third victory in this year’s race.
Denis Menchov of Russia held on to the overall leader’s pink jersey.
Australian teammate Mark Renshaw again set Cavendish up for the sprint.
“I got another perfect leadout from my teammates,” Cavendish said. “They spent a lot of time in the wind and did such a good job that I didn’t have to go flat out. I was 80 per cent.”
Cavendish, the British standout for Team Columbia-Highroad, clocked three hours 48 minutes 36 seconds over the almost entirely flat 176-kilometre leg from Lido di Camaiore to Florence.
Alessandro Petacchi of Italy finished second and Allan Davis of Australia was third, both with the same time as Cavendish.
Michael Barry of Toronto, one of Cavendish’s Team Columbia-Highroad teammates, finished 99th in the stage in a massive group eight seconds back of the lead pack. Barry is now 150th overall, two hours two minutes behind Menchov.
Cavendish won the prestigious Milan-San Remo single-day classic in March and wore the pink jersey for two stages after Columbia won the team time trial that opened the Giro.
Menchov maintained a 34-second lead over Danilo Di Luca of Italy in the overall standings, with American rider Levi Leipheimer third, 40 seconds behind.
Menchov, Di Luca, Leipheimer and Lance Armstrong finished with the main pack, eight seconds behind Cavendish.
Armstrong has stopped speaking to reporters, apparently angry over the fallout of a rider protest he helped orchestrate in Milan last weekend. The seven-time Tour de France champion remained 12th overall, 6:34 behind Menchov.
“St 13 is done. And was done fast,” Armstrong wrote on his Twitter feed. “I think we averaged almost 30 (m.p.h.) for 110 miles. Crazy!! All is well tho. Congrats to Cav-o.”
Petacchi won the second and third stages in sprints, but Cavendish has gotten the better of him lately.
“When (Renshaw) started the sprint, I lost five meters right away,” Petacchi said.
With no more clear chances for sprinters, Cavendish could leave the race before the 14th stage, an undulating 172-kilometre leg from Campi Bisenzio to Bologna, with an uphill finish.
The race ends May 31 in Rome.
“I don’t know. We’ll see. I want to carry on,” Cavendish said. “The team is doing so well. We’ll talk about it tonight.”
Friday’s stage started along the Tuscan coast, then moved inland past Lucca before concluding next to the Arno river, within sight of Florence’s Duomo — or cathedral.
With the temperature hovering at about 30 C for most of the stage, riders struggled to stay hydrated.
Three riders — Leonardo Scarselli, Mikhail Ignatiev and Bjorn Schroeder — broke away at the 12-kilometre mark and established a 5:25 lead over the main pack at one point.
Schroeder, a German with the Milram team, left Scarselli and Ignatiev behind with a bit more than 30 kilometres to go but was caught by the pack within six kilometres of the finish.