Goss leads Cavendish to 'carnival' prize

With a single Cat 2 climb early in the stage followed by fairly flat terrain, Thursday's Stage 12 was an opportunity for a sprinter to take the win. Though none have been dominant, most of the big sprinting names had found success: Tyler Farrar had already won Stage 5, Thor Hushovd had won Stage 6 and Alessandro Petacchi had won Stage 7. Conspicuously winless, however, was Mark Cavendish, who as of this morning had yet to claim a stage in his first-ever Vuelta and was like the one kid at the carnival who hadn't won a stuffed animal yet.

This is not to say that Cavendish's Vuelta hadn't been successful thus far. In fact, he took the red jersey on the first stage after the team time trial, and until Stage 11 he was also leading the points classification. Despite this, for a sprinter of Cavendish's caliber, going to a Grand Tour and not actually winning a bunch sprint is like going whale watching and only seeing some dolphins -- sure, they're aquatic mammals too, but they're just not that big and they're not the reason you get on the boat.

Fortunately for Cavendish, the stage played out well for him today. With his teammate Lars Bak in the breakaway, HTC-Columbia was absolved of any responsibility for chasing while Garmin-Transitions did a significant amount on the front. This left HTC-Columbia comparatively fresh for the finale. Things did look a bit uncertain for Cavendish with 800 meters to go when Danilo Hondo of Lampre executed a perfect leadout for Petacchi. However, Petacchi was at home in Italy, having abandoned the Vuelta after crashing in Stage 8, so the leadout proved less than effective. Meanwhile, Cavendish himself was nowhere to be seen -- until his teammate Matthew Goss appeared at the front with Cavendish on his wheel.

So formidable was Goss' leadout that the pair actually established a gap over the rest of the sprinters. Looking behind him, Cavendish appeared to be goading his rivals, but as he later explained, he had wanted to give Goss the win as a reward for his hard work. Goss, however, was already too busy saluting his leader's inevitable victory. In any event, the fact that Cavendish and Goss could engage in a gentlemanly round of "After you," "No, I insist, after you," is a testament to the decisiveness of the win.