Cavendish misses out on Tour hat-trick.

BRITAIN'S Mark Cavendish will head into Stage 6 of the Tour de France today believing that he let a great chance of completing a hat-trick of sprint successes pass him by.

The Manx rider finished third in the fifth stage yesterday as Frenchman Thomas Voeckler held on after a successful early breakaway to claim a maiden win on the Grand Tour.

Cavendish, the winner of the second and third stages, was part of a peloton that failed to sufficiently close the gap on Voeckler and his five fellow breakaway riders, despite being only a minute behind them with 40 kilometres to go.

While the teams in the peloton bickered over who should lead a late charge, Bouygues Telecom's Voeckler capitalised by making a dash with less then 5km to go, leaving for dead his rivals in the leading bunch.

Cavendish and the rest of the chasing pack were only seven seconds adrift of Voeckler when the home favourite crossed the line, and better organisation could have yielded another stage win for the Briton.

Voeckler, 30, will not care a jot, although he fully expected to be swallowed up by the peloton at the death.

"Through superstition, I didn't want to say before the Tour started that I was eyeing a stage win - and actually I never believed it today," said Voeckler, who wore the yellow jersey for 10 days in 2004.

"It is only when I was 300 metres from the line that I started to believe in victory.

"I've been chasing that victory for such a long time."

Cavendish, who rides for Team Columbia, extended his lead over Norway's Thor Hushovd at the top of the sprinters' points classification.

There was no change at the summit of the general classification, with yellow jersey Fabian Cancellara, secondplaced Lance Armstrong and third-placed Alberto Contador safely among the peloton.

The sixth stage will see the riders trek 181km from Girona to Barcelona.

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PEDAL POWER: The peloton rides through the French countryside during stage five of the Tour de France from Le Cap D'Agde to Perpignan