Mark Cavendish seals Tour of Qatar victory with fourth win in a row on stage six

Mark Cavendish recovered from an early crash to complete a dominant overall victory at the Tour of Qatar with a fourth sprint win in a row.

The final stage took the riders on a flat, 116km route starting at the Sealine Beach Resort and finishing with 10 laps of a 6km circuit around Doha Corniche. In the absence of any purposeful breakaway, the peloton entered the final 30km with Omega Pharma - Quick-Step in control at the front. But as the pace quickened in the closing stages, other teams took up the initiative and the Belgian squad fell back down to the pack. Cavendish, though, has proved the master of positioning in Qatar and used other teams' lead-out trains on the left-hand flank of the peloton as the springboard for his sprint. Victory at the Tour of Qatar joins his win at last summer's Ster ZLM Tour as his only stage-race triumphs. He also topped the points classification, with BMC winning the team classification ahead of Team Sky. Cavendish added: "The guys had been a bit used up for working for me all day and the entire race, so I knew I can kind of just go alone, leave it late and come up the left side again. That is exactly what I did. "I knew they would go right, and I could just use other lead-outs to move up in the last 300m and jump on the left-hand side." Stage six result 1 Mark Cavendish (GB) Omega Pharma - Quick-Step, 2:24.31; 2 Yauheni Hutarovich (Blr) Ag2r-La Mondiale, same time; 3 Barry Markus (Ned) Vacansoleil-DCM, st; 4 Adam Blythe (GB) BMC, st; 5 Taylor Phinney (USA) BMC, st; 6 Kenny van Hummel (Ned) Vacansoleil-DCM, st; 7 Alexander Kristoff (Nor) Katusha, st; 8 Bernhard Eisel (Aut) Team Sky, st; 9 Nacer Bouhanni (Fra) FDJ, st; 10 Guillaume Boivin (Can) Cannondale, st. General classification 1 Mark Cavendish (GB) Omega Pharma -Quick-Step, 15:55.20; 2 Brent Bookwalter (USA) BMC, +25secs; 3 Taylor Phinney (USA) BMC, +26; 4 Adam Blythe (GB) BMC, +30; 5 Bernhard Eisel (Aut) Team Sky, +32; 6 Greg van Avermaet (Bel) BMC, +32; 7 Michael Schar (Sui) BMC, +35; 8 Edvald Boasson Hagen (Nor) Team Sky, +39; 9 Luke Rowe (GB) Team Sky, +40; 10 Geraint Thomas (GB) Team Sky, +40