Alberto Contador won his third Tour de France, beating Andy Schleck to the yellow jersey. Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP
Despite winning the charge to the line on the final stage of the Tour de France, Mark Cavendish was unable to wrestle the green jersey for the top sprinter from Alessandro Petacchi, who finished the day behind the Briton in second.
For Cavendish to win the prize he had to win the final sprint along the Champs-Élysées and hope that the Italian came no higher than seventh. However Petacchi was strong enough to beat everyone else except Cavendish, who claimed his fifth stage win of this Tour and his 15th overall.
"A lot of people said I could still get the green in Paris but I always said that would take good luck on my part and bad luck on Alessandro's," said Cavendish after the race. "I'm really happy. It was a perfect end to the Tour and I'm looking forward to celebrating."
Behind him Alberto Contador enjoyed the 102.5km procession from Longjumeau to Paris, riding in a relaxed peloton. The victory – his third in the Tour – was assured after his strong performance in the time trial yesterday, in which he increased the gap on Andy Schleck to 39 seconds. The 27-year-old is now four victories behind the record champion Lance Armstrong, who today bade farewell to the race he dominated with seven wins between 1999 and 2005, and also retired from cycling.
The day started late when Armstrong and his RadioShack team arrived at the starting line in black jerseys featuring the number 28. Armstrong, who is riding in his 13th and final Tour, had tweeted earlier in the day: "teamradioshack wearing new jerseys today. Riding in honour of the 28million people worldwide dealing with cancer."
But officials forced the team to change into their normal jerseys of red and grey as they had not asked permission to make the switch. While the Texan was clearly annoyed, he and his team-mates changed and re-attached their race numbers as photographers and television cameras hovered, giving the jersey perhaps more publicity than was originally intended.
Armstrong was frustrated about the ruling, but believes it may have increased the profile of the campaign. "The idea was to talk about the significance of the disease," he said. "Unfortunately the commissaries didn't agree. They have rules and they made us change. I suppose in the end changing the jerseys probably brought more attention, so maybe it was a blessing. But it was stressful at the time."
Team RadioShack, who won the Tour's team title, were fined a total of 6,300 Swiss Francs (£3,870) for the incident. Armstrong received a further financial penalty for not signing on at the beginning of the stage – something all riders are required to do. He was ordered to pay an additional 100 Swiss Francs (£61).
The top three riders in this year's Tour take to the podium – Schleck on the left, Contador in the centre and Denis Menchov on the right
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