Cavendish shrugs off cheating claims to take stage

British sprint ace Mark Cavendish won the 10th stage of the Giro d’Italia, a 159km ride from Termoli, yesterday just hours after he was accused of cheating by two of his rivals.

Cavendish edged out fellow sprint specialists Francisco Ventoso and Alessandro Petacchi as Spain’s Alberto Contador retained the leader’s pink jersey.

Cavendish would have been especially delighted to have edged out Ventoso, who was one of the two riders who earlier accused him of being towed up Mount Etna in Sunday’s stage.

Cavendish arrived just 25 seconds inside the stage cut-off point, which had he missed would have meant the end of his participation in the race.

“He should only be happy that he’s still in the race, he should have been disqualified for being attached to the car for a long time during the climb on Etna,” said Ventoso.

“It’s shameful, everyone else kills themselves to get to the top inside the cut-off time while someone else holds onto a car without the authorities intervening.”

While Cavendish refused to comment according to La Gazzetta dello Sport, his team’s sports director Valerio Piva denied the allegations.

Yesterday’s stage was livened up by a three-man breakaway of Fumiyuki Beppu, Pierre Cazaux and Yuriy Krivtsov, who jumped away in the first kilometre but were caught 11km from home.

HTC took the lion’s share of the chase work alongside Contador’s Saxo Bank team but three kilometres out Briton David Millar, of Garmin, made a solo break for home.

He was caught one kilometre out as Movistar led out the sprint finish but Cavendish stuck to Petacchi’s wheel and timed his burst just right.