What makes cavendish so good
Winter Olympics: controversy ahead of the Beijing games. In Depth. Popular articles. What do the different coloured poppies mean? It seemed like a logical next step, and coincided with Bradley Wiggins' victory at the Tour de France. Cavendish won three stages but was also happy to play his part in the historic victory.
Yet he never quite fitted in with the marginal gains and data-driven ethos of Team Sky. He was one of the stars of British cycling, even without winning a medal at the London Olympics, but had found his own route to the very top, fuelled by determination and a hunger to succeed. He had no time for those who doubted his training discipline or his temperament. Cavendish quickly moved to Patrick Lefevere's Omega Pharma-QuickStep team in , going on to describe his three years with the team as the happiest of his career.
It is perhaps the reason why he would like to return there in for a final swansong season. The years from to were the years of peak Cavendish. He won races during the nine intense seasons of racing. At the time, L'Equipe and many other media outlets understandably crowned Cavendish as the greatest sprinter of all time.
In most sports, media access is limited and controlled, and access to the riders is filtered and purified by teams and sponsors in cycling. But the cycling media is fortunate to be able to stand in or just beyond the finish of almost every race. That makes it difficult to see what happens in a sprint, but allows the media to speak to riders just seconds after they cross the line, in the heat of the moment, when adrenaline and emotions are running high. I've been fortunate enough to witness the raw and intense emotions of victory, and the pain and disappointment of defeat, at the Tour de France.
We're then able to explain what we see and hear to Cyclingnews readers and convey riders' reactions. That access was missing this year due to the COVID restrictions, limiting the media's ability to capture the emotions of the moment. We can only hope it returns in During Cavendish's peak years, every victory was major news, and, much to Cavendish's disliking, his defeats and his difficult moments often became bigger news than somebody else's victory.
Cavendish was often driven by personal pride and hunger to prove his critics wrong and prove himself right, and so his emotions at the finish were usually intense — and certainly more intense than other riders' reactions. I and others were there to witness his biggest victories. We saw him hug and celebrate with his teammates after Tour de France victories and I was present beyond the finish line at Milan-San Remo when Cavendish burst into tears as he realised that he'd won La Classicissima.
Of course, we were also witness to Cavendish's defeats, and were often the target of his anger. More than once, Cavendish has responded badly to journalists — especially television journalists that were simply looking for a post-race reaction.
In his own autobiography, Cavendish recalls one such incident at the Tour de France when he ran out of patience with a television journalist chasing a sound bite. Cavendish's quick-thinking, but not very diplomatic, answer was: "That journalists sometimes ask some stupid fucking questions. I've had similar reactions at Tirreno-Adriatico, the Dubai Tour and elsewhere. Just seconds after the finish, Cavendish's tongue can be as sharp as his sprint.
It's never nice when you are just trying to do your job, but in truth it's always worth the risk. Cavendish is so emotional after a sprint that when he does open up and let out his true feelings, you capture who he really is and what drives him; you capture a sense of the adrenaline-fuelled emotions of sprinting shoulder to shoulder at over 70kph. Team High Road Director Rolf Aldag saw something there, maybe it was bravery or positioning or the ability to make the right decision without the time to decide, and brought him.
Cavendish won four stages. Twenty six stage wins later, Cavendish entered this Tour de France with few expectations, but the punditry shifted. Tacked onto the back of Morkov, with a recent win in his back pocket, we all wondered what he could do. Did he have the belief? Would a win beget wins? Tags Mark Cavendish. Tour de France. Editors' Picks. And what a team it is. The results are similar too with Cavendish being delivered to the front of the race in pole position time after time.
This is no different in Perhaps more impressive than the record is the fact Cavendish has won Tour de France bunch sprints in three different decades over a year period. Not only that but these decades have seen generations of top sprinters who could have knocked Cavendish off his perch at any point.