Earlier today Team HTC-Highroad's Mark Cavendish powered to his second stage win of the 2011 Giro d'Italia in the town of Ravenna.

Already the Maglia Rosa leader of the 2011 Giro d'Italia for one day and the winner of stage 10, the British sprinter stormed across the finish line in Ravenna ahead of Italian Davide Apollonio of Team Sky and fellow Italian Alessandro Petacchi of Team Lampre-LSD.

According to Mark Cavendish his team received no help and tackled the task of bringing back the breakaway group completely alone.

"Winning today was really important, my teammates had worked all day with no help at all from any other squad and I wanted to thank them for it by winning," Cavendish said afterwards.

Cavendish was led out by lead-out men Alex Rasmussen (Denmark) and Mark Renshaw in the final kilometers to the Isle of Man rider's great satisfaction.

"They did an incredible job. Then I started up my sprint with 200 meters to go and I managed to get it."

"I'm really pleased, the Giro is a very important race for me, there aren't any more sprint stages in this year's race and I really wanted to get another win here."

Cavendish said that he had managed to avoid a last-kilometer crash in the bunch because his team had foreseen there could be problems.

"We had seen before the stage, in the route-book, that it might be difficult, we knew we had to be close to the front, and we got through it ok."

In the coming days the 2011 Giro d'Italia will feature major mountain climbs. Cavendish has, therefore, decided to exit the Giro.

Team Saxo Bank-SunGard's triple Tour de France Champion Alberto Contador leads the Giro d'Italia overall 59 seconds ahead of Team HTC-HighRoad's Kanstantsin Sivtsov and 01:21 ahead of Italian favorite Vincenzo Nibali of Team Liquigas-Cannondale. Team Garmin-Cervelo's Christophe Le Mevel is chasing at 01:28.

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You'll find complete results and more photos from stage 12 here.

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