Under a thunderous Breton sky, Thor Hushovd, the sprinter from Norway, won yesterday’s second stage of the Tour de France from Auray to Saint-Brieuc, after a typical last-ditch attack by Fabian Cancellara, the breakaway specialist, for once failed to succeed. The Swiss, winner of the prologue time-trial in last year’s London Tour start, raced clear in the final kilometre, but appeared to run out of steam as he approached the finish line, allowing the speeding bunch to overhaul him.

Hushovd, who won the Tour’s points classification in 2006, proved the fastest of the sprinters, but his victory did not dislodge Alejandro Valverde, the race leader from Spain. Valverde, winner of Saturday’s tough uphill finish to Plumelec on the opening road stage, held on to his overall race lead of one second. David Millar, of Scotland, is in seventh place overall, one second in arrears, and is hoping that his time-trialling ability will take him close to the yellow jersey in tomorrow’s 29.5-kilometre individual time-trial in Cholet.

“If I’m going to get the yellow jersey it’ll be after the time-trial on Tuesday,” Millar said. “Hopefully, I can put time into Valverde in the time-trial and then hang on to him at the summit finish at Super-Besse.”

Hushovd’s stage win, his sixth, brought a climax to a day of gusting winds and heavy showers. “It was a very hard sprint because of the headwind, but the team worked well for me,” Hushovd, who attributes his sprinting strength to a winter regime of Norwegian salmon and cross-country skiing, said. “I’d looked at the finish and I knew it suited me, but I struggled on the first stage so I hadn’t expected to win so soon.”

Valverde, who crashed out of the 2006 Tour on the third stage with a broken collarbone, has thus far avoided any similar tumbles. “The wind and rain made it a very difficult stage,” the 28-year-old said. “I used up a lot of energy, but it was my first day in yellow and it was great to hear people shouting my name.”

Mark Cavendish, from the Isle of Man, who might have expected better, finished in 27th place in the main field. Contrary to expectations, he has had a quiet start to the Tour, working for Gerald Ciolek, his team-mate. With two sprint stages remaining, before the first mountain summit finish in Super-Besse on Thursday, he will need to find his sprinting form quickly if he is to have much hope of snatching a stage win in the Tour’s opening week.

The longer the Tour goes on without a victory for Cavendish, the more determined the 23-year-old is likely to become to stay in the race and to survive to Paris. But with the Olympics looming and Cavendish seen as a likely medal-winner for Great Britain, his Australian sprint rival, Robbie McEwen, sounded a note of caution.

“It’s hard to know as a young guy how you’re going to recover,” McEwen said. “It’s possible to come here and be great over the first five or six days and then just lose your form.”

Meanwhile, French cycling’s 23 years of hurt look set to continue. Yesterday, despite the best efforts of local heroes David Lelay, Christophe Moreau, Thomas Voeckler and Sylvain Chavanel, who formed a breakaway quartet in the closing kilometres, the spoils yet again fell to a foreigner as Hushovd led the peloton home.

Chavanel, who has yet to win a stage in the Tour, is nonetheless the best-paid rider in French cycling. Despite that, he has already begun to ruffle feathers on this year’s race by asserting that “since the Festina Affair, nothing has really changed”. Fortunately for the understandably nervous Tour organisation, that assessment goes against the mood of cautious optimism that has characterised this Tour to date.

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