Tour De France 2011: Mark Cavendish Docked Points but Stays in Green

Despite finishing stage 18 outside the cut off time Mark Cavendish has retained the green jersey, although his lead had be more than halved.

Cavendish finished the stage, 35'40" down on stage winner Andy Schleck, less than three minutes outside the cut off time.

The brutal stage, rated as a coefficient three (or intensely difficult) stage by organisers saw over 80 riders miss the cut off time as Andy Schleck powered ahead of his rivals to take victory and gain more than two minutes over all his yellow jersey rivals.

That was just not enough to wrestle the jersey from Thomas Voeckler who rode with every last ounce of effort to retain the jersey by just 15 seconds.

The group of riders who finished in the 'autobus' outside the cut off time was so large it was inevitable that race organisers would allow them all to ride on in the race, but the slow ride did not go unpunished as each of the riders, including Cavendish, had 20 sprint classification points taken from them.

Twenty points were removed as this is the number of points received by the winner of a mountain stage.

The big blow for Cavendish is that his main rival for the green jersey, Jose Joaquin Rojas finish the day just inside the cut off time and has seen the Spaniard move to within 15 points of Cavendish.

Belgian champion Phillipe Gilbert will be disappointed to finish in the same group as Cavendish.  The Omega Pharmo-Lotto man lies third in the points classification and remains 70 points behind Cav, a gap that is surely too big to overcome at this late stage.

With one more mountain stage left, finishing atop the famous Alp D'Huez, Cavendish will be desperate to avoid further penalty that could see him rise into Paris without the green jersey.