For the past few months, every aspect of Mark Cavendish’s life had been transfixed on the Tour de France. Specifically, stage five of the Tour de France. Specifically, the final 500m of stage five of the Tour de France. Every pedal stroke in training, every bite of food, every minuscule part of his equipment was calibrated to win one more stage.
“I think not just as a sports person, in anything you do you need a goal, a target, a reason to commit to work hard,” Cavendish says. He is speaking on Monday morning from his hotel on the French Riviera, his voice a little scratchy from the night before.
“Winning one more was always what got me out of bed in the morning, what got me on the bike, what made me do that extra half hour, what made me not eat that extra french fry the kids had left, you know what I mean?”
He can still picture the final moments of that 35th win: weaving through the pack, surfing wheels, jumping on to German rider Pascal Ackermann and using his slipstream like a catapult to launch into clear air. Suddenly he was in the lead, head down, hurtling to the line.
“Life’s taught me enough never to take anything for granted, whether that’s in a bike race or out of it, so you keep going as hard as you can and you hope you can hang on.”
He remembers the moment he knew he’d done it, the wash of relief that it was all over.
“When the paint starts before the finish line – the big advertising painted on the road – you know. You know from experience: if no one’s next to you there, you’ve won.”
Cavendish is sitting on a shady terrace as teammates and family buzz around him. “For the minute it’s the same Monday as every Monday after the Tour de France,” he smiles. “I would never touch my bike. I wake up with my family, do some media and just enjoy being out of the bubble – not just the last three weeks but the bubble of the last few months. You’re with some great people but you’re focused on one thing which is trying to go fast on a bicycle, and it takes a bit of time to decompress from that. On the first day, you’ve just got to enjoy the beauty of doing what the f*** you want to do.”
He enjoyed a late night with his Astana teammates, having dinner and a few drinks as they shared tales of the past three weeks. Cavendish doesn’t like to hog the limelight but his cause was their purpose, and he gave a speech thanking them for their sacrifice.
I dreamed of riding the Tour de France as a kid and I’ve got to do it— Mark Cavendish
“There were definitely some hard points, days when we were alone in the mountains as a unit trying to get through,” he says. “I say ‘as a unit’ as if I had really a lot to do with it. It was more like my boys would ride in the valley so I could save my energy for the hill, and they just pushed and pushed and then they rode to my pace up a climb.”
On those long mountainous slogs in the beating heat they would cross the line together, a band of bedraggled brothers arriving just inside the time cut, the broom wagon escaped for another day. “It was completely selfless work, but hard work. It was pretty special.”
On the last day in Nice, Cavendish finally enjoyed the ride. Stage 21 has typically been a day of pressure and expectation on the Champs-Elysees down the years, but this time the race ended with an inconsequential time trial outside Paris. Cavendish took in the moment and was embraced by his family at the finish.
“Most of the peloton get to absorb the Champs-Elysees but as a sprinter, you can’t. I actually absorbed the final day, absorbed the emotions of finishing the Tour. Fifteen Tours, and that’s the first time I’ve felt that.”
It was, he confirmed, his final Tour de France. All that dedication, that focus, all those french fries turned down for the cause. Had he not won that sprint in Saint-Vulbas, had he still been level with Eddy Merckx on 34 stage wins the day after the Tour ended, would he be yearning for one more? Could he still have walked away?
“It’s a good question,” he says, before a long pause. “All I know is I feel complete.”
Cavendish’s new record of 35 wins seemed impossible to beat back on 3 July when he took stage five. When the yellow jersey, Tadej Pogacar, congratulated him on the feat, Cavendish joked with a hint of menace: “Don’t beat it,” and Pogacar smiled back: “I won’t.”
Pogacar had 12 Tour stages then, but three weeks is a long time in cycling and he has since added five more. Pogacar has 17 – at the same age, Cavendish had 15 – and it is not so fantastical to think that the Slovenian might one day get close.
“Everything’s a possibility,” says Cavendish. “That’s the beauty of sport. If someone is inspired to achieve something and they achieve it, that leaves an inspiration for somebody else to come and achieve more.”
It will hold for a decade at least. Now, finally, Cavendish stands alone.
“I’m proud and I’m happy. I’ve made some incredible memories with incredible people, doing a sport that I love. I can only be grateful. I dreamed of riding the Tour de France as a kid and I’ve got to do it and I got to be successful at it. And I got to have fun along the way.”
