Tour de France 2021 live: latest updates as Mark Cavendish chases stage 10 win

01:21 PM

105km to go

The peloton is now into the intermediate sprint. A group of riders breaks away from the front of it, but Cavendish is not among them. He wants the stage win, not the intermediate sprint points!

01:17 PM

109km to go

The first 13 riders will pick up points from the intermediate sprint alongside the two leaders.

01:15 PM

111km to go

The leaders are 3km away from the intermediate sprint.

And there is a crash at the back of the peloton! Mads Pederson of Trek-Segafredo and Julien Simon of Team TotalEnergies. Both are now back on their bike and continuing with the stage.

01:08 PM

114km to go

Tosh van der Sande and Hugo Houle are three and a half minutes ahead of the peloton.

01:01 PM

We join the race with 122km to go

Belgium’s Tosh van der Sande and Canada’s Hugo Houle lead the stage, having broken away from the peloton earlier in the race.

Mark Cavendish is back in the leading group, eyeing another stage win as he continues his remarkable comeback.

11:08 AM

Good afternoon. Can Froome find a return to form like Cavendish?

Mark Cavendish has backed Chris Froome’s bid to return to competitiveness and said his experience proved nobody should be written off.

Cavendish’s remarkable resurgence continued last week as he collected his first Tour de France stage wins since 2016, moving to 32 in his career, despite being a late call-up to the Deceuninck-QuickStep squad.

After several years in which he was impacted by illness and injury, fearing his career was over in the winter, Cavendish can empathize with the challenges facing Froome, who is still recovering from a devastating crash in 2019.

Like Cavendish, Froome is racing the Tour for the first time in three years, but the four-time winner sits 153rd in the general classification, one hour and 47 minutes down on race leader Tadej Pogacar.

The 36-year-old knew he would not be competitive this year, but the Israel Start-Up Nation rider retains his dream of pursuing a record-equalling fifth Tour title.

“I can talk from personal experience – you don’t write somebody off,” said Cavendish, 36. “It’s down to the individual, how long they want to do something, and what they feel they can return to.

“Unless you are that person, you can never understand. Chris Froome has been a champion for many years. Very few people can get to that level, so people will not understand the mindset and the fight to get back...

“Froomey is a friend of mine, but even if it was somebody, I didn’t like, if I saw somebody being able to suffer physically and mentally to try to come back to somewhere they were, and they know where they can get to, I applaud it, it’s the strangest thing you can do.” Cavendish enjoyed a great opening week of the Tour, winning stages four and six while moving into the points leader’s green jersey, but like many, endured a tough weekend in the mountains.

The Manxman looked emotional as he embraced the teammates who safely got him to the finish of stage nine into Tignes inside the time cut on Sunday and admitted he was in great need of Monday’s rest day. “I can’t remember a first rest day of the Tour de France feeling like a second rest day,” he said. “Everybody is completely spent.”

Today’s stage 10 looks much more favorable with 191 relatively flat kilometers between Albertville and Valence on the menu – an opportunity for Cavendish to move to within one stage win of Eddy Merckx’s Tour record of 34 and extend his advantage in green.

“There are a lot fewer sprinters (in the race), that’s for sure,” Cavendish said of the impact of a tough opening week. “We’ve got a strong group with experience who know how to control a race, so we just have to hope for the best, I guess.”