Mark Cavendish matches Millar's treble in Spain

Mark Cavendish won the 12th stage of the Vuelta a Espana yesterday after his chief rivals misjudged their sprint finish to leave the Briton with an unchallenged run to the line.

The sprinters were always likely to prevail on the largely flat 172.5km ride from Andorra la Vella to Lleida, and Cavendish's HTC-Columbia team ensured it was their man who prevailed with a perfectly-timed move in the final kilometre.

The rest of the pack failed to respond to the HTC-Columbia attack, meaning Garmin-Transitions sprinter Tyler Farrar came home in a distant second place, while Cavendish's leadout man Matthew Goss took third.

The result leaves the general classification standings unchanged, with Euskaltel-Euskadi's Igor Anton enjoying a lead of 45 seconds over Vincenzo Nibali of the Liquigas-Doimo team.

Cavendish's victory in four hours and 30 seconds marks his first stage victory on the Vuelta, and means the Manxman has now achieved the feat of claiming wins at all three of the grand tours - the Vuelta, Tour de France and Giro d'Italia.

Cavendish becomes only the second Briton to win at each of the three blue riband events, following on from Scotland's Robert Millar, who completed the set in 1987.

"That (victory] was because of my leadout man," said Cavendish, who has now won 21 grand tour stages and 60 stages in total in his professional career.

"Gossy did an incredible job. It was so chaotic in the final stages and I thought we were too far back with 600 metres go. Then Gossy gave me a leadout and I saw the gap we had. I wanted to give him the win but he pulled over. The team worked really well."

Victory also put Cavendish back in charge of the points competition, with the 25-year-old now enjoying an 11-point lead over American Farrar.

The pack was fractured by an early break after just 10km featuring Markus Eichler (Milram), Perrig Quemeneur (Bbox), Gustavo Cesar (Xacobeo Galicia), Lars Ytting Bak (HTC-Columbia), Antonio Piedra (Andalucia CajaSur) and Biel Kadri (AG2R).

Three more riders joined the breakaway by the 50km mark as the gap to the peloton reached its zenith at 3mins 18secs before the lead quickly evaporated.

The peloton finally caught up to the breakaway with 23km remaining, before Goss' attack proved decisive and paved the way for Cavendish's landmark win.