Mark Cavendish got the perfect end to his season as he took his second win the Abu Dhabi Tour this week, ensuring he finishes with ten wins this season after a dominant Dimension Data leadout on the Yas Marina F1 circuit.

In the Yas Marina Circuit stage of the Abu Dhabi Tour, for the third straight day the break was comprised of the first riders to attack from the bunch: Michal Paluta (CCC Sprandi), Yauhen Sobal (Misnk), Kristian House (One Pro Cycling), Fredrik Frisson (Lotto-Soudal), Sergey Firsanov (Gazprom-Rusvelo). 

The break was kept under by control by Dimension Data and the quintet had just 1:30 with 80kms to go. Meanwhile, House won all of the intermediate sprints but his 24 points was not enough to unseat Jens Keukeleire (Orica-BikeExchange) from his jersey.

The gap was under a minute with just four laps or 20km remaining. Frison attacked the break while BMC’s Floris Gerts jumped free of the bunch. The Dutchman quickly caught Sobal and Firsanov from the break and then proceeded to promptly drop them.

Gerts was 27 seconds clear while the remaining three break riders had 45 seconds on the peloton, still under the command of Dimension Data. Gerts was absorbed as Frison and Paluta jumped clear from House at 4km to go.

At this point, the peloton was close behind and the break sat up, with BMC and Dimension Data took one side of the road each. Orica-BikeExchange and Sky tried to outdo Dimension Data, who had begun the leadout for Mark Cavendish.

Mark Renshaw’s leadout was actually too strong for Cavendish, who found himself with a gap to close. However, the winner of stage two had plenty of pace to come round his Aussie leadout man and hold of Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek-Segafredo) by a bike length. Sky’s Elia Viviani was far back in third.

There was no issues or splits for the GC contenders, so Tanel Kangert (Astana) maintained his comfortable gap over Nico Roche (Sky) and Diego Ulissi (Lampre-Merida) in the GC to take the overall.