SEDAN, France, 8 July 2003 ­— Australian sprinter Baden Cooke achieved a lifetime’s dream to win the second stage of the Tour de France, a 204.5km ride from La Ferte Sous Jouarre to here yesterday.

After narrowly missing out several times on his debut last year, the 24-year-old from Benalla finally got it right after fdjeux.com teammate Brad McGee, wearing the yellow jersey, opened up an inviting path on the home straight.

“I can’t believe it’s happened,” beamed Cooke, a widely-feared sprinter who learned to rub shoulders with the best on the “tough” tracks of Victoria.

In second place was Frenchman Jean-Patrick Nazon (Jean Delatour) followed by Estonian sprinter Jaan Kirsipuu (AG2R).

McGee, the winner of Saturday’s prologue, had looked set to lose his yellow jersey on numerous occasions throughout the day - first to another Australian Robbie McEwen, then to Cooke.

The 27-year-old from Sydney, who like Cooke is a former track star and is also the reigning world individual pursuit champion, will now spend his third night in the prestigious yellow tunic. McGee has a four-second lead over both David Millar (Cofidis), in second, and third-placed Cooke, who also pulled on the white jersey for the Tour’s best young rider (under-25) for his efforts.

Jan Ullrich, the 1997 champion who is making his return to the race after missing it last year, is fifth overall at 06secs while four-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong is 10th at 11secs.

Despite almost losing his jersey, McGee said it would have made no difference.

Yesterday’s predictions for a mass sprint were almost upset by ambitious young Frenchman Frederic Finot, who went off after just five kilometers and enjoyed the best part of a 200km breakaway before being caught near the end.

Finot, who rides for Jean Delatour, worked alongside Credit Agricole’s Lilian Jegou and together they built a maximum lead of just over 11 minutes.

However with McGee’s lead in danger, and the thought of a relative unknown winning a stage that had sprint written all over it, the peloton kicked into life with less than 10km of the stage to race. A few kilometers from the finish McGee reacted quickly to ambitious counter attacks, first by Italian champion Paolo Bettini then Millar.

The Aussie then helped chase down another escapee and by the time the bunch arrived in Sedan McGee was sitting nicely.

Finot’s brave attempt ended just three kilometres from the finish, the peloton swallowing him up as they entered the winding section prior to the home straight.