San Luis Obispo, California, 17th May 2011 – HTC-Highroad’s Mark Cavendish has powered to his second stage win of the 2011 Giro d’Italia on Thursday.

Already the leader of the 2011 Giro d’Italia for one day and the winner of stage 10, the British sprinter stormed across the finish line at Ravenna ahead of Italians, Davide Apollonio and Alessandro Petacchi.

“Winning today was really important, my team-mates had worked all day with no help at all from any other squad and I wanted to thank them for it by winning,” Cavendish said afterwards.

“They did an incredible job. Then I started up my sprint with 200 meters to go and I managed to get it.”

“I’m really pleased, the Giro is a very important race for me, there aren’t any more sprint stages in this year’s race and I really wanted to get another win here.”
Cavendish said that he had managed to avoid a last-kilometer crash in the bunch because his team had foreseen there could be problems.

“We had seen before the stage, in the route-book, that it might be difficult, we knew we had to be close to the front, and we got through it ok.”

Cavendish’s Giro victory is the 66th professional road win of his career and the fourth of the 2011 season after a stage of the Tour of Oman, the Scheldeprijs and his previous stage win in the Giro. It is also the seventh stage victory of his career in the Giro d’Italia.
Together with the opening team time trial and Cavendish’ previous win, HTC-Highroad have now racked up three stage victories in the Giro d’Italia 2011.