Tour de Farce: Tony gives Cav a V for victory from his hospital bed

The grisly compound fracture of Martin's left collarbone ruled 'The Policeman of Cottbus' out of starting stage seven from Livarot to Fougeres – and he was recovering in a hospital bed in Hamburg when Cavendish finally ended the hoodoo and picked up his first Tour scalp in two years.

Injecting a rare moment of interest to an otherwise long and rather spectatorially-arduous stage in north-west France, a smiling Martin posted a picture of himself on Twitter watching the Tour after his operation.

Over Martin's bandaged torso you can spot a monitor showing the Tour – with the Lotto-Soudal team of Cavendish’s great sprint rival Andre Greipel setting the tempo in the peloton.

If Cavendish was without Martin, then Greipel was deprived of one of the key components in his own lead-out train after Kiwi veteran Greg Henderson also withdrew from the race with two broken ribs.

While Martin made a point to join in the Etixx-QuickStep team celebrations after Zdenek Stybar on Thursday evening (before flying home on a personal jet), Henderson was still hanging around the corridors of the Tour ahead of Friday’s stage – in which Lotto-Soudal had high hopes of helping Greipel snaffle a hat-trick.

Despite Hendo’s tactical input it was not to be for jolly green giant Greipel, whose wheel Cavendish followed before surging past to secure the 26th Tour scalp of his career.

A pattern has emerged in Etixx-QuickStep’s triumphs on the Tour: each of them seem to stem from an absence or set-back.

Take Martin’s win on the cobbles at Cambrai: achieved despite the German juggernaut having to ride the final 18km on team-mate Matteo Trentin’s smaller bike.

As Martin held on for the win, on-board cameras inside the Etixx team car beamed out images of an ecstatic directeur sportif Davide Bramati punching the air in celebration and paying scant disregard to his steering wheel, let alone the traffic.

Having seen the footage the next day, the race organisers promptly banned Bramati from following stage six on the grounds of him not wearing a seatbelt.

The next evening, when the team were celebrating Stybar’s solo win at Le Havre, the Czech rider joked that he never won when Bramati was around and perhaps the Italian should keep away from races more often.

And then we have Friday’s stage seven, which Cavendish won despite the void left by a man he describes as doing the work of four normal human beings. With that in mind, were Etixx-QuickStep to win Sunday's team time trial it would perhaps be their best achievement yet.

Elsewhere, it was another close-but-no-cigar moment for Peter Sagan who, despite the presence of his man mountain of a father, could not find the speed in his legs to beat either Greipel or Cavendish in Fougeres.

With Tinkoff-Saxo’s eggs all in Contador’s panier (a basket that was upturned in the neutral zone ahead of stage seven), Sagan is having to contest these sprints as a lone ranger – following his rival’s wheels and latching onto their trains.

That he now has two third places and three second places is impressive in its own right – but there’s a growing sense of Groundhog Day lingering over the Slovakian tyro, who has now finished runner-up in a Tour stage 14 times since his debut in 2012.

At least Tinkoff-Saxo haven’t got Sagan, the white jersey, on domestique duties like Sky did for world champion Cavendish a few years back – no one will ever forget his rainbow stripes bulging under the strain of eight bidons.

No, Tinkov would never pay a man three million euros a year to be the butler of his pedalling playthings – not when he can get a former Grand Tour winner to do it for him.

Poor Ivan Basso – in his last year on the Tour, that’s what he’s been reduced to. And Tinkoff-Saxo’s special water bottle vests certainly prove that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

It makes you think if the team’s getting the best out of Basso’s steadily dwindling power output…

But then again, long gone are the days when Basso was as light of foot and sprightly as Bambi prancing through fields of wheat.

In a nutshell: After the Mur de Huy in Belgium, it's the Mûr-de-Bretagne in France - a significant uphill finish that will force the race favourites to show their cards.

History: Retired Australian Cadel Evans won on the Tour's only previous finish on the Mûr-de-Bretagne in 2011 - the year he would go on to win the yellow jersey in Paris.

Believe it or not: The 1.6km ramp with an average gradient of 8.4% above the town of Mûr-de-Bretagne is so arduous it's known as the Alpe d'Huez of Brittany.

Did you know: French tyro Warren Barguil hails from nearby Hennebont and is clearly one to watch on the punchy finish after winning a similar stage at Castelldefels in the Vuelta back in 2013.

Look out for: A rare occurrence in the locality is bound to be caught by the helicopter cameras near the finish where, for the first time in 30 years, Lake de Guerlédan - the biggest artificial lake in Brittany that was flooded in 1930 – is currently empty.

The last time it was drained, Brittany's most famous rider - Bernard Hinault - was riding to his fifth and final Tour win. Around three million visitors came to see the lost valley moonscape of submerged locks, houses and forests when the lake was previously drained. No Frenchman was won the Tour since the lake was last emptied...

Plat du Jour: Galette saucisse (a sausage wrapped in a savoury pancake) and some venison terrine.

Tour tipple: You can bet your house on a few riders of yesteryear filling up their bidons with chouchen - a type of mead that's very popular in Brittany. The 14% alcoholic kick of buckwheat honey packs a punch bigger than Bernard Hinault.