Mark Cavendish: "I was quite fortunate, I could feel Philipsen coming at me"

Mark Cavendish managed to come back from a disappointing opening stage straight into a win on the second bunch sprint of the UAE Tour. The Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl rider was the first to launch his sprint into a headwind and managed to hold off the competition to take a much needed win to build on his ambitions of returning to the Tour de France.

"More so than the win, I knew we could win here, but more so just how the team worked today. A third of the team here are first-year professionals, this is the first or second race in their careers and seeing how they rode today they were like seasoned professionals," Cavendish said after the finish in a post-race interview.

"That's after one day, talking about how we didn't get it right yesterday and nobody panicked today. Their job was to get me to the final as fresh as possible, they did that and fortunately, they did it so well I could go from between 300-250m into a headwind." In what was a rather calm day in Abu Dhabi, with the exception of some tense moments from 90 to 70 kilometers to go where the winds caused a flare up in the peloton, Mark Cavendish emerged victor after a strong sprint into Abu Dhabi Breakwater after following the wheel of his former teammate Sam Bennett in the final meters before launching his move.

"Usually that's too far going into a headwind but I was delivered so well that I knew I would have the energy to keep it until the line. I was quite fortunate, I could feel Philipsen coming at me, we know he's in good form so I was happy I could hold him off and take the win," Cavendish completed.

With a 9 kilometer time-trial and a summit finish to Jebel Jais, the Belgian lineup will be switching their focus into supporting Fausto Masnada who is coming with high ambitions into the race, as for Cavendish he's likely going to take a step back in the peloton and save his energy for the coming sprints which will come on stages five and six.