For the last few months, every aspect of Mark Cavendish’s life has been focused on the Tour de France. Specifically, the fifth stage of the Tour de France. Specifically, the last 500 metres of the fifth stage of the Tour de France. Every pedal stroke in training, every bite of food, every tiny piece of his equipment has been geared towards winning another stage.
“I think in everything you do, not just as an athlete, you need a goal, a purpose, a reason to commit to working hard,” Cavendish says, speaking from his hotel on the French Riviera on Monday morning, his voice a little hoarse from the night before.
“Winning another one is always the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, gets me on my bike, gets me to work an extra half hour, keeps me from eating those extra fries the kids left, you know what I mean?”
He can still picture the final moments of his 35th victory: tearing through the pack, surfing the wheels, leaping onto German driver Pascal Ackermann and using the wind current as a catapult to launch himself into the open air. Suddenly he was in the lead, his head down, hurtling towards the finish line.
“Life has taught me never to take anything for granted, whether it’s in or out of a cycling race. So just keep doing the best you can and hope you can hold on.”
He remembers the moment he realized he had accomplished it, the relief that came when it was all over.
“When the paint starts before the finish line – the big advertisement painted on the road – you know. You know from experience: if there’s no one with you, you’ve won.”
Cavendish sits on a shady terrace as his teammates and family buzz around him. “For a moment it’s the same Monday as every Monday after the Tour de France,” he smiles. “I never touch my bike. I wake up with my family, I do a bit of media and I just enjoy being outside the bubble – not just the bubble of the last three weeks, but the bubble of the last few months. You’re with great people but you’re focused on one thing, which is trying to go fast on the bike, and it takes a while to get out of that. On the first day you just have to enjoy the beauty of doing what you want to do.”
He stayed up late with his Astana teammates, sharing stories from the past three weeks over dinner and a few drinks. Cavendish doesn’t like to be the centre of attention, but his cause was their cause, and he gave a speech thanking them for their sacrifices.
As a kid I dreamed of participating in the Tour de France and I got to do it
Mark Cavendish
“There were definitely some tough moments, days when we were trying to go through the mountains as a unit on our own,” he says. “I say ‘as a unit’ like I really had a lot to do with it. It was more like my kids were riding their bikes down the valley so I could save my energy for the top, and they just pushed and pushed and then they kept going up the hill at my pace.”
They would cross the finish line together in the scorching heat on those long, mountainous roads, a group of distraught siblings arriving just inside the time limit, the sweeper truck running off to another day. “It was a total sacrifice, but it was hard work. It was pretty special.”
On the final day in Nice, Cavendish finally got to enjoy the ride. Stage 21 has typically been a day of pressure and anticipation on the Champs-Elysees over the years, but this time the race ended with a low-key time trial outside Paris. Cavendish seized the moment and was embraced by his family at the finish.
“Most of the peloton can absorb the Champs-Elysees, but as a sprinter you can’t. I actually absorbed the last day, I absorbed the emotions of finishing the Tour. Fifteen Laps and it was the first time I felt that.”
It was his last Tour de France, he confirmed. All that dedication, all that focus, all those fries rejected for the cause. If he hadn’t won that sprint in Saint-Vulbas, if the day after the Tour ended he still equalled Eddy Merckx with 34 stage wins, would he have wanted another? Would he still have walked away?
“That’s a good question,” he says before taking a long pause. “All I know is that I feel complete.”
Cavendish’s new record of 35 victories seemed impossible to beat when he won the fifth stage on July 3. When yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar congratulated him on the feat, Cavendish joked menacingly: “Don’t pass that,” and Pogacar smiled: “I won’t pass.”
Pogacar had 12 Tour stages at the time, but three weeks is a long time on the bike and he has since added five more. Pogacar has 17 stages – Cavendish had 15 when he was the same age – and it’s not so fantastical to think the Slovenian could one day come close to that.
“Everything is a possibility,” Cavendish says. “That’s the beauty of sport. If someone is inspired to achieve something and they achieve it, it inspires someone else to come along and achieve more.”
It will last at least a decade. Now, at last, Cavendish stands alone.
“I’m proud and happy. I’ve made incredible memories with incredible people doing a sport that I love. I can only be grateful. As a kid I dreamed of competing in the Tour de France and I got to do it and be successful at it. And have fun in the meantime.”