Britain's Cavendish wins Tour de France stage

Mark Cavendish of Britain won a Tour de France stage for the second time, cutting through the field Saturday in a sprint finish in the rain.

Team Columbia teammate Gerald Ciolek was second while team leader Kim Kirchen of Luxembourg kept the yellow jersey after the eighth stage in a race that was shaken a day earlier by the positive doping test of Spain's Manuel Beltran.

Cavendish and Ciolek finished ahead of Jimmy Casper of France in the 107-mile ride from Figeac to Toulouse.

"To finish with a 1-2 and have Kim in yellow, you can't do better than that," Cavendish said. "When I'm there in the sprint and fired up, normally I can win."

This was the last chance for the sprinters for a while, with riders entering the high mountains of the Pyrenees on Sunday.

Four cyclists _ Laurent Lefevre, Jerome Pineau and Christophe Riblon of France and Amets Txurruka of Spain _ broke away in the first hour of the race and at one point led by five minutes. But they were chased down by the teams of the sprinters and the last two were caught with just under two miles to go.