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7 Stories on Mark Cavendish
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SI.com: Austin Murphy: Contador a threat to Lance's record; more Tour lessons

What we learned from the 96th Tour de France:

SI.com: Austin Murphy: As Tour rests, rivalry between Armstrong and Contador heats up

Well, that was a trifle anticlimactic, no?

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Lance is back, and still the star

Tony from L.A. was badly outnumbered. A rotund bloke in a cycling jersey that fit him like a sausage casing, he was leaning over the asphalt in front of the Rabobank bus near the start of Stage 4 of the Tour of California. In orange chalk, he was spelling out the names of the Rabo riders such as Robert Gesink, Oscar Freire and Peter Weening.

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Closing the door on an exciting, if not anonymous, Tour

Okay, withdrawal time. A dramatic, transformative Tour de France has been decided by one of the narrowest margins in the 105-year history of the race. Cycling fans who've been following the Tour for the last three weeks must now grapple with a void in their lives, a Bobke-less universe.

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Despite the headlines, the good guys are winning cycling's doping fight

Mark Cavendish is going down in history. Riccardo Ricco is going home. It's been a Good News-Bad News kind of Tour de France, with today's Stage 12 perfectly capturing the Hope vs. Dope dialectic of this grand and haunted race.

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Cyclists out to regain public trust at 95th Tour de France

Rhetorical question posed on the eve of the 95th Tour de France, which begins Saturday in Brest, at the tip of the Breton peninsula: Wouldn't it be surprising if cycling, for so long the poster child of pharmacologically jacked-up sports, turned out to be cleaner than, say, the NFL, or the NHL, or Major League Baseball?

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Slow pace biggest story from Tour

Yes, Tuesday's Stage 3 into Compiegne featured an electrifying finish, with race leader Fabian Cancellara of Team CSC schooling the sprinters, throwing down a vicious acceleration 700 meters from the finish line, then holding off the muscle-bound likes of Erik Zabel, Tom Boonen and Robert Forster. To me, the biggest story of the day was not Cancellara's breathtaking speed at the finish, but the stately, unhurried, club-ride pace set by the peloton in the hours before the thrilling denouement. This was the slowest stage in recent memory. As I will explain later, that's a good thing.

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