What an effort! Well won boys. Now I'm not going to sleep, stupid adrenaline.

Well done, I can't wait to get in the mountains.

This. I've already made a few calls to wake people up.

Still remember that Hoogerland crash.

I think everyone watching will remember that forever. Was horrible driving.

That's pretty piss poor over that Ted King incident.

A big crash, Cavendish wins as well.

After Mark Cavendish won the fifth stage of the Tour de France into Marseille he took a friendly dig at the Australian outfit of race leader Simon Gerrans.

Cavendish won the 228.5km stage in a sprint finish after Gerran's Orica-GreenEdge teammates had spent most of the day on the front of the bunch controlling the race.

"We were motivated today," Cavendish (Omega-Pharma) said after crossing the line ahead of Edvald Boasson Hagen of Sky and Cannondale's Peter Sagan.

"Orica-GreenEdge hardly ever do any work so it's quite apt they're there to ride on the front today and we could sit behind."

Cavendish's team is often left to reel in breakaways alone as he's considered the fastest man in the peloton.

Orica-GreenEdge had been hoping for a third-straight stage victory after winning Tuesday's team time trial but in the end was content to avoid two crashes in the final 15km and keep Gerrans in yellow.

"Today we had two objectives," Gerrans said at the finish.

"To try and win the stage and keep the yellow jersey within the team.

"Matt Goss got distanced on the final climb but I still have the yellow jersey on my shoulders and I managed to stay up the front and stay out of trouble."

Australian director Matt White said the team had wanted to keep Gerrans in yellow or give the jersey to South African teammate Daryl Impey who started - and ended - the day second overall.

Orica-Greenedge still has the top three riders on GC with Swiss Michael Albasini in third place.

"It was a long, hard day today," White said on the team's website.

"I was a little surprised that we didn't have more help coming from other teams who thought they had a chance in the sprint."

Cameron Meyer from Perth in particular did a lot of work on the front into a headwind.

"Ouch that tickled," he tweeted after the stage.

"Big feed needed tonight."

Orica-GreenEdge wore special yellow and white helmets on Wednesday as leaders of the team classification.

Gerrans donned yellow bib shorts along with the traditional yellow jersey.

The peloton gave the green light to an early six-man breakaway which formed in the opening kilometres.

By the 37km mark they had built a maximum lead of nearly 13 minutes but that began to drop as the teams with top sprinters joined the chase led by Orica-GreenEdge.

The last escapee was reeled in with 4km to go.

Former Tour winner Cadel Evans was lucky to avoid a pile-up in the last 1km which brought down BMC teammate Michael Schar.

"Someone took him out from behind and I was right next to him so I suppose I should count myself lucky," Evans said.

Another BMC rider, Brent Bookwalter, had earlier crashed on the final climb.

Race favourite Chris Froome and his Australian super domestique Richie Porte were riding on the front of the bunch at the time so avoided trouble.

Is that tonight?

Yes. Le Tour finally begins!

What a day of sport.. V8's thisarvo, Lions tonight, F1 quali then a night of Le Tour in the Pyrenees!