Mark Cavendish (Etixx-QuickStep) finally won his first stage of the 2015 Tour de France, coming out on top in the day's bunch sprint.

The 'Manx Missile' beat rivals Andre Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) and Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) into second and third place respctively, while the much-fancied John Degenkolb (Giant-Shimano) and Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) just missed out on the podium.

The stage marked a change in fortunes for Etixx-QuickStep, who lost the overall race leader Tony Martin to a broken collarbone sustained in a crash late on in Thursday's stage.

Cavendish's compatriot Chris Froome (Sky) had already regained the race lead after Martin's withdrawal but chose not to wear the yellow jersey on Friday as a tribute to the unfortunate German.

Early in the stage, a five-man breakaway had gone clear: Anthony Delaplace and Brice Feillu (Bretagne-Seché-Environement), Luis Angél Maté (Cofidis), Kristijan Durasek (Lampre-Merida) and the mountains classification leader Daniel Teklehaimont (MTN-Qhubeka).

The quintet battled to stay away for the entire stage but were swept up by the advancing peloton with around ten kilometres remaining.

From that point, Giant-Shimano looked to be well-positioned to set up Degenkolb for the win, but were undone after some of their riders took the wrong route around a roundabout.

That left the door open for Cavendish, Sagan and Greipel, and it was the German who began his sprint first, making a dart for the line.

However, Cavendish came from behind his two rivals to snatch the lead inside the final metres of the stage and held on to take the victory.

"The team were motivated," Cavendish said after the stage. "After we'd gone close the last couple of times, we kept the faith and to come out after losing Tony and do what we did, it was nice to get the win, especially for Tony. I'm just so happy to have got the win."

The Tour continues on Saturday with Stage 8, a 181.5-kilometre stage from Rennes to Mur de Bretagne, before Sunday's team time trial.

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Jamie Hall
Cycling editor and football writer. Currently studying sports journalism at university.