Mark Cavendish won his 26th Tour de France stage on Friday to take sole possession of third place on the overall list.

The Manx Missile darted down the inside to deny German Andre Greipel a third sprint finish stage win this year as Peter Sagan finished third at the end of the 190.5km seventh stage from Livarot to Fougeres.

It was a second straight win for the Etixx-Quick Step team following Zdenek Stybar’s success on Thursday, and went some way to making up for the loss of the yellow jersey due to Tony Martin’s broken collarbone. Martin crashed on Thursday’s stage and had to quit the race despite being in the leader’s yellow jersey, before undergoing a successful operation in Hamburg on Friday.

Cavendish had not won a Tour stage since 2013 having crashed out with a separated shoulder on the first stage of the 2014 edition.

And he had been out of sorts so far on this Tour, finishing fourth on Sunday’s second stage and third on Wednesday’s fifth stage, both of which were won by Greipel.