Mark Cavendish has said that he has one more opportunity to win a Tour de France stage, after he finished disappointed again on stage 10, coming 18th.
The Astana Qazaqstan rider is in his last Tour, and broke the record for stage wins at the French Grand Tour last week, with victory last week on stage five.
A week on, and Cavendish sounded pretty downbeat about his chances of adding to the record in a spectacular manner, although there are three sprint stages left, according to the race’s organisers.
Asked how many more days he could win on, he said: “One, two, one. I don’t know, we’ll see. We’ve gotta get through the mountains.”
After looking so impressive in Saint-Vulbas last week, when he broke the record he shared with Eddy Merckx of 34 stage wins, the Manxman has finished 19th, 88th, and 18th in the three sprint stage wins since.
On Tuesday, Cavendish appeared to lose his lead out train in the closing kilometres, with Michael Mørkøv and Cees Bol, his Astana teammates, essentially looking over their shoulders for the 39-year-old.
While Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) celebrated his seventh career stage win at the Tour, Cavendish was left ruing a missed opportunity, with just a few days left to make a difference. He hinted at an inquest to come.Â
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“We went how we wanted to go for 3km, but the Dutch lad from Orica [Dylan Groenewegen of Jayco AlUla] was on on his [Michael Mørkøv’s] front wheel through the left corner, he lost the wheel, and he wasn’t going to close it,” he explained. “I had to close it, and I don’t really know why the boys went, they weren’t supposed to go until later. We’ll have to speak about it and see what happened. It’s just not like Mørkøv really. We haven’t spoken about it, or analysed it.”
“You have a plan, you try and go with the plan,” he continued. “Things aren’t going to be exactly as you want them to go. Someone has to win, a lot of people have to not win. That’s bike racing, so we’ll try again.”
Stages 12, 13 and 16 are set to be sprint stages, but there is the small matter of the Pyrenees in between 13 and 16, and Thursday’s stage follows Wednesday’s hard day in the Massif Central.Â
Project 35 is accomplished, but 36, which looked such a possibility a week ago, is running out of time.
