Cycling: Cavendish wins as dozens crash out

Mark Cavendish won a crash-marred seventh stage of the Tour de France, capturing his 17th career stage win in the same town where he won his first, as world champion Thor Hushovd retained the yellow jersey.

A pile-up toward the end of the 218km race across the Loire River valley under sunny skies also cost British champion Bradley Wiggins his hopes of a final podium place in Paris, as Sky's leader crashed out of the race with what the team said later was a broken collarbone.

HTC-Highroad rider Cavendish sprinted out of the speeding pack in the last few hundred metres, beating fellow sprint specialists Alessandro Petacchi and Andre Greipel to the finish. Cavendish sprinted to victory in the same town where he won his first Tour de France stage in 2008.

Cavendish gave credit to his team-mates for helping him to the memorable win. "It was an amazing lead-out, I didn't have to do anything and I'm really proud of them all," Cavendish said. HTC-Highroad has now racked up 42 victories this season alone, making them the most successful ProTour team.

Britain's Team Sky suffered a cruel reversal of fortune, losing their leader and main contender. Wiggins went down along with a few dozen other riders, 38km from the finish. Only 24 hours earlier Wiggins and his Sky team-mates were celebrating Norwegian Edvald Boasson Hagen's stage victory, the team's first on the Tour de France. Wiggins was competing in his fifth tour and, after winning the pre-tour warm up Criterium du Dauphine in June, had been considered a leading contender for a podium place in Paris.

There was no change at the top of the standings, with Cadel Evans still in second place, just one second behind, and Frank Schleck still in third place, four seconds behind race leader Thor Hushovd (Norway; Garmin-Cervelo team).

Race favorite and three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador finished the stage safely in the lead group, maintaining the Saxo Bank-SunGard rider's 1m 42s deficit in the overall standings. Veteran American rider Christopher Horner was also left groggy in a ditch as several riders went down in the crash which injured Wiggins but the 39-year-old RadioShack rider was able to continue.

RadioShack's nightmarish start to the Tour showed no sign of improvement as team-mate Levi Leipheimer lost more than three minutes during the seventh stage.

Both American riders are out of contention for the overall win and team manager Johan Bruyneel said Horner is unlikely to start the next stage.

The American-registered team had already lost one of its leaders on Wednesday when young star Janez Brajkovic of Slovenia pulled out from the race following a nasty spill that left him unconscious, bloodied, and suffering from a concussion and broken collarbone.

Before the race started, RadioShack were hoping that having four leaders - Brajkovic, Leipheimer, Horner and Andreas Kloeden of Germany - would be a huge asset in the team's attempt to knock defending champion Alberto Contador off his perch.

"We still have Klodi, he looks OK and he was up there in the front," Bruyneel said about Kloeden.

"That looks good, it's a shame we lost Jani, but Levi is still OK. We are down to one leader, we'll have the whole team around him and we'll see how it goes."