He's done it. Mark Cavendish is the sole name on top of the historical leaderboard of Tour de France stage wins. His wife Peta Todd is happy there won't be any 'what ifs' and that her husband can finally wrap the career at the end of the season without any regrets.
"When Mark decided to do another year, we all knew that it meant it was all-in," Todd tells ITV Cycling after the stage. "And he's never not all-in. So to have a conversation that we were gonna be all-in, we knew it was gonna be a lot."
This meant Cavendish had to train even harder than before to make sure that he doesn't "only come close to winning" again. "We haven't seen him a lot this year, even less than usual. He's been at camps and basically Vasilis (Cavendish's coach, ed.) has been married to him instead of me (laughs)."
But all of the hard work paid off and any result that comes the Manxman's way in the next two weeks will be just a bonus. "I'm so so pleased for him because one thing I wanted for him - I never wanted him to end with a 'what if'... to come out of the Tour like he did last year after coming so close. I never wanted it to be another sad story of the Tour, because ultimately Tour de France is his ultimate love affair."
"I never wanted him to sit at home in 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 20 years and be like: 'I wonder if I could've gone back and still done it'. If he'd come back this year after throwing everything at it and it hadn't worked, then he wasn't good enough to win a stage at Tour de France anymore. Because noone deserves to win another stage at the Tour - you have to earn it. And we believed it. He believed it. You saw his team out there... they believed in it. And clearly he was good enough to win another stage at the Tour de France," she concludes smiling.
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