TOUR DE FRANCE: Olympic hopeful Cavendish left with swollen leg after tangle with fan

Posted: Thursday 19th July 2012 | 19:27

MARK Cavendish was left fuming with a spectator after a crash during the Tour de France - just nine days before he goes for Olympic gold in London.

Cavendish is hoping to give himself the perfect preparation for the road race by winning Sunday's showpiece final stage of the tour on the Champs Elysees for the fourth time in his career.

But he was left less then impressed after tangling with a spectator in the closing kilometres of the 17th stage, which also marked the race's final day in the Pyrenees.

"Thanks to the dickhead who crashed me at 3km to go today by waving his flag so it wrapped round my handlebars," he tweeted.

"Bike's broke. Leg's swollen."

Meanwhile, Team Sky colleague Bradley Wiggins produced a devastating burst up the final climb of the day to consolidate his position in the yellow jersey - and all but wrap up a historic first ever British victory in the race.

The stage was won by Alejandro Valverde but Britain's Chris Froome, second overall, finished 19 seconds behind him with team-mate Wiggins right on his wheel.

In contrast it was a bad day for third placed Vincenzo Nibali, who lost 18 seconds in his increasingly futile battle to break Team Sky's stranglehold on the race.

"The minute we went over the Peyresourde I knew that was it," said Wiggins.

"At that point, the first time in this whole Tour since I've led this race, I thought 'maybe I've just won the Tour'. And that's when it starts getting hard then because you lose concentration. It was an incredible feeling. It really was.

"Obviously we’ve got the time trial to come but that’s very much our domain. It’s all looking very good at the moment."