'Happiness is the most important thing' for Mark Cavendish according to his coach: "For Mark now, it is all about having fun"

Mark Cavendish's quest for a 35th Tour de France stage win is sure to be one of the stories of the summer in 2024. According to his coach, Vasilis Anastopoulos, the key for the 'Manx Missile' is keeping him happy.

"We already did some sprint sessions here and I can tell you that those guys speak with their eyes, they don't need to say much," Anastopoulos tells GCN from Astana Qazaqstan Team's winter training camp in Altea, Spain. "They have been racing together for so many years and now here united with Cees Bol, it is great. He is a fantastic guy for the lead-out train, so I think and I hope that next year, we’re going to have one of the best lead-out trains in the WorldTour."

With Cavendish set to be supported by the likes of the aforementioned Bol, Michael Morkov and Davide Ballerini, Astana do indeed have an all-star sprint train. With both Morkov and Ballerini having past experience with Cavendish also, time to gel is not a problem. "You don’t have to look at what races you can try and work together to build on something with. You know you can kind of hit the ground running, I think, and it’s definitely a benefit," explains Anastopoulos.

"Happiness is the most important thing, because once you enjoy training then even the hard sessions are beneficial. For Mark now, it is all about having fun, doing the quality sessions that he needs to do and taking the benefits out of it," Anastopoulos says of Cavendish's winter training in Greece. "It has become a tradition of rediscovering Greece, of just him and me spending two weeks there together, riding the velodrome and riding the hills. He loves it and I can do my job perfectly well there, so it’s good."

Key to Cavendish's Tour de France hopes will be a successful pre-race training camp. "I think it's going to benefit him because being at the start of the Tour de France this year, you need to be absolutely at your peak," says the Greek coach. "The level is so high, the race days are so hard that you don’t need to be only a good sprinter. Physically, you need to be at your best and that’s why we’re trying to do this block of camps and races."

"I truly believe he can win. But that’s also what I said in 2021 before he started the Tour, so if everything goes well, I think he’s capable of winning," he concludes. "As a team, we want to win more races, to step up on the rankings - because this year was a really bad year for Astana - and I want to see every single rider performing better than last year. Because if at the end of the season, we have this result, I will be extremely happy."