Tour de France 2012: Mark Cavendish wins stage two with a typically dramatic bunch sprint victory Christophe Kern (Europcar), Michael Morkov (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank) and Anthony Roux (FDJ-BigMat) formed the day's three-man break which had little chance of survival on a route made for the fast men of the peloton. The intermediate sprint came 54.5km from the finish, with Kern, Roux and Morkov riding across without contesting the race for the line, leaving the first rider of the peloton chasing 13 points. Cavendish was alone for Team Sky and crossed behind former HTC-Highroad team-mates Goss and Mark Renshaw (Rabobank) to claim nine points. The gap to the escapees was kept to under three minutes and Roux launched a solo attack as his two fellow escapees were swept up with around 25km to go on a straight run-in into Tournai. With a full-speed peloton in pursuit, Roux was caught with just under 15km remaining. The sprinters' teams lined up, while Evans' BMC Racing squad were also prominent at the front, with Wiggins staying out of trouble alongside. Cavendish's sprint rival Marcel Kittel (Argos-Shimano), though, was at the back of the peloton due to illness. The tempo was high as the peloton negotiated a technical and tight conclusion, including two roundabouts and a narrowing section of road. Lotto-Belisol moved to the front with 1.5km to go, but all the main protagonists were present as Cavendish tucked in behind Greipel. With his team-mates primarily assigned to support Wiggins, Cavendish, who had early support from Bernhard Eisel and Edvald Boasson Hagen, had to freestyle from wheel-to-wheel in the finale before timing his move to perfection, rounding Greipel with 200metres to go and winning the dash for the line to add to his formidable total of stage wins. It was the first time Cavendish has won a stage of the Tour outside France.