🇫🇷 PHOTO: @LeTour Well, the time has come! @GarminCycling #TDF2024 #AstanaQazaqstanTeam #GarminCycling
"I’m a very, very happy person" - Dream finale for Mark Cavendish's career-long goal of breaking Tour de France record
CyclingThursday, 04 July 2024 at 11:15
The 35th stage win at the Tour de France has finally come about for Mark Cavendish. The Manx Missile has worked towards this goal throughout over decade and a half and over the past few years it often looked like the dream was unrealistic or even over. It required tremendous tenacity, patience and belief to make it this far but this Wednesday Cavendish has become an official individual record holder.
"I’m not someone who celebrates by throwing a party or doing something crazy. I just want to be with everyone who has helped make what we’ve done happen. I’m a very, very happy person," Cavendish admitted in an interview with Wielerflits. "I have an incredible team with Astana Qazaqstan. An incredible group of friends and teammates, especially an incredible family. I’m so grateful that we’re here. My family came here last night, then they went to the start and finish. It always means so much to me when they’re on the race, so they can win with me.”
Astana has put on a massive display of confidence in Cavendish over the past year and a half; signing him last minute, signing Sporting Director, coach and leadout from previous years and providing him with full support into the Tour de France despite the difficult season he's had. Cavendish has completely changed his way of working this year to fit 'modern cycling's standards better and all of these factors payed off on stage 5 of the Tour as he beat Jasper Philipsen in the final sprint.
It is the end of what the team has termed 'Project 35', which will ultimately be the highlight of it's season, and what the team worked on the most. “I'm really happy about that. I've been away from home so often… When I've been home for three weeks this year, it's been a lot. Being away, training, racing. Not just me, all my teammates. Everyone has put so much energy into this project."
There were many words both from him and figures from throughout all the peloton as he succeeded in this historic feat, and he has no problem in complementing the competitors that have made this a challenge, alongside all those who thanked him at the finish line in Saint-Vulbas yesterday. “I feel very privileged that I have had the opportunity to share the peloton with riders in recent years that I will remain a fan of after my own career, when I see them on TV."
" But the vast majority of the riders said: ‘I hope you can take that stage win here’, and things like that. That makes me really emotional… There is an incredibly good group of riders in both the men's and women's peloton. That is the future of our sport. I am proud that I can soon say that they were my opponents before I quit.”
Read also
claps 2visitors 350
Just in
Popular news
Latest comments
- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024