News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
Sir Mark Cavendish will line up in Florence on Saturday, ready for his 15th and final Tour de France, in the knowledge that he is already making history: he will be the first knight to ever ride the French Grand Tour.
His mind, though, will be on a bigger slice of history. The 39-year-old, as I’m sure you already know, stands just one stage win away from setting the record for Tour de France stage wins. At present, the Astana Qazaqstan rider has 34, the same number as the greatest cyclist of all time, Eddy Merckx, but needs just one more to forget on alone.
Whenever I think of making history, I think of an Irish play of the same name, written by Brian Friel. I doubt Cavendish is of the same mind. Instead, he will be focused on making his own history, his cycling immortality, which will come with just one more stage win.
Just one, that’s all he needs. If you think about the 164 wins the Manxman has taken over his career – a record for a male sprinter, by the way – just one more doesn’t seem like that big an ask.
I think he will do it. There might be as many as eight sprint opportunities at this year’s Tour, and Cavendish only needs one to go right. He almost had it last year, in Bordeaux, only to be denied by his gears slipping and a rampaging Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
Cavendish has always been one of the best at getting in the right place at the right time, and his Astana team is set up to deliver him to exactly the right point; Michael Mørkøv and Davide Ballerini were both part of the Soudal Quick-Step team which helped him to four wins in 2021, and with Cees Bol, form an enviable leadout train.
You can almost picture it in your mind. One of the stages ending in a flat finish, like Dijon or Saint-Amand-Montrond. Cavendish, hidden from view until the final moment, bursting out as if from nowhere, out-pacing his rivals, the arms outstretched. It would feel deserved too, with the man in blue coming back from so much just to be on the start line, let alone competitive.
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I’ll be honest, I have done a huge U-turn on the idea of Cavendish doing it this season. He hasn’t raced as much as he usually does, through illness mainly, and has only won twice – at the Tours of Colombia and Hungary.
Also, Philipsen looked so good last season, and has built this year around the Tour again. Along with Arnaud De Lie (Lotto Dstny), there are more in form – and potentially faster – sprinters at the race.
However, the Tour is different, and the ‘Manx Missile’ thrives on the biggest of stages. He’ll be there, frustrated on days he misses out, and will find the right moment to strike. The experience he has built up counts for so much, and as long as he makes it over the high mountains, an opportunity will present itself. Also, Philipsen and De Lie can’t win all eight sprint stages, right?
Dot Tilbury, Cavendish’s first ever cycling coach when he was making his way on the Isle of Man, put it better than me earlier this month: “The only thing I can say is that Mark Cavendish wouldn’t be there if he didn’t think he could do it.
“People have written him off when he has had his ups and downs, but he wouldn’t have come back if he didn’t think he could win. Don’t write him off. When he is cooking on gas, it’s poetry in motion.”
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