Fired-up Mark Cavendish hits back

Mark Cavendish was in tears after winning his first stage of this year's Tour de France and then brushed off criticism of him.

The Isle of Man sprinter has had a troubled Tour - he crashed on Sunday and finished 12th on Wednesday with the finish line at his mercy. He put that misery behind him yesterday using his pace to take the fifth stage from Epernay to Montargis.

"It means everything," said a tearful Cavendish. "It has been hard this year and things haven't really gone our way in the first few days here."

French newspaper L'Equipe has branded Cavendish a "pyromaniac" suggesting his excessively aggressive riding was responsible for Sunday's crash in Brussels.

Asked yesterday whether he is misunderstood, Cavendish regained his composure and said: "There's no fire without fuel, but if you put fuel in the fire it can be other people who waft it for it to get bigger. That's what's happened.

"A lot of people want to judge my personality on 30 seconds of what they see after a race. If somebody's so ignorant to dislike me, without knowing me, they're not worth worrying about."