Gearing up for one last dance, the final Tour de France of the legendary career of Mark Cavendish is now just a matter of days away. With Project 35 sure to be one of the stories of the upcoming Grand Tour, excitement is growing within the Astana Qazaqstan Team.
Having initially planned for the 2023 edition of the Tour de France to be his swansong, Cavendish came so close on stage 7, finishing second behind Jasper Philipsen thanks in part to a gear malfunction in the final few hundred metres, the Manx Missile crashed out the very next day with a broken collarbone. Not one to go out with a whimper, it didn't take much for the Astana Qazaqstan Team to convince Cavendish to have one more year.
With an experienced sprint train including the likes of Michael Morkov, Cees Bol and Davide Ballerini, Cavendish believes his teammates could be the secret weapon this summer. "They are guys that I've raced with before," he explains to Road Code. "So it's not about finding out where they can fit, what they can do and having to show them that if they put faith in me, I can deliver."
"I know how they work and where to follow. They know how I work and how to guide me," the 39-year-old sprinting legend continues. "That's definitely a benefit. It takes a lot of time to build a unit and find out how something works. So you can look at winning straight away."
The faith Cavendish has in his teammates is clearly reciprocated too if recent comments by leadout man Cees Bol are anything to go by. "He is capable of it. We believe in him with the whole team," Bol previewed confidently and determinedly in conversation with Wielerrevue. "Basically, Michael Morkov is the last man and I am the link before that. We have trained well as a team lately, so we are ready."
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