The most popular win of 2024 🙌 Fellow riders were queuing up to congratulate Mark Cavendish on his record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage win.
"We have nine more or less flat stages!" - Jens Voigt expects Mark Cavendish to postpone retirement again for Tour de France swansong in 2025
CyclingThursday, 31 October 2024 at 10:42
Mark Cavendish already has his place in Tour de France folklore confirmed. One of the most synonymous names of the modern era of cycling's most iconic race, the Manx Missile took a record breaking 35th stage victory in 2024, moving clear of the legendary Eddy Merckx. Despite the last two editions of the Tour de France having been posed as Cavendish's final one, could he yet come back for more?
Well, after the reveal of the route and profile for the 2025 edition, Eurosport pundit and 17-time Tour de France competitor in his own right, Jens Voigt, the chances of Cavendish postponing retirement yet again may have gone up drastically over the last 24 hours or so.
"The 2025 Tour is pretty standard in terms of overall lengths and the amount of flat and hilly stages and mountain-top finishes," the 53-year-old German previews in conversation with Eurosport. "One change is that we have nine more or less flat stages until the first really tough stage (Stage 10) in the Massif Central. That does invite Cav to go one more time, to try to win more stages and to try to hold off the chasing stage hunter Pogacar!"
As mentioned, Cavendish broke the long standing record of the legendary Eddy Merckx this summer with a 35th victory on stage 5 in Saint Vulbas. As touched upon by Voigt there though, the rampant Tadej Pogacar is already hunting the Astana Qazaqstan Team sprinter down having added a further six stage successes to his palmares in 2024 en route to the Maillot Jaune, taking his all-time tally of Tour de France stages to 17. If the Slovenian keeps this up, Cavendish's record may already be at threat in just a few years time. As such, could the lure of 'Project 36' drag Cavendish back one final crack at more Tour de France success?
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- Avoiding him is a good strategy, you get more wins and then you can compete in the TDF relatively relaxed. Pit yourself against Pogi and not only there will be no wins, it will be considerable mental setbackabstractengineer21-12-2024
- If you hold onto then, you blowup in a minute and then you finish 5 minutes down like Ben O'Connorabstractengineer21-12-2024
- Based on what argument?Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- Agreed except the length of climbs, pretty sure you can stretch that to about a km unless we’re talking about half a dozen in quick succession.Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- Lot of contradictory information floating around world cup contenders, someone should do some tidying up.Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- A bit much to suggest that Pogacar is better than MvdP on most terrains. The only terrain Pogacar is clearly better is long climbs, on any other terrain they are pretty even except flat cobbles and short and steep climbs (max a few 100 mtrs) where MvdP is clearly better than Pogacar.Velovibes21-12-2024
- The likelihood of RE improving enough at this point to outclass TP or JV is less than zero.verve82521-12-2024
- That’s the most stupid thing I’ve read for a long time, did you not go to school and learn even the most basic physics? Aero depends on one thing only, drag, drag depends speed and the relationship is squared and apart from maybe at zero or the speed of sound or due to side winds that relationship is valid at all speeds, it dies not “suddenly” start at a magic number. Very simply, the faster you go the more the effect becomes important. If you think 25km/h is needed to have noticeable effects you’re delusional, athletic WR are cancelled as soon as winds top 2m/s that’s 7.2km/h, why because the assistance is already too important at that speed and the times prove it. You don’t even consider wind which can significantly increase the effective speed for aerodynamics and you underestimate speed of climbs, 6% is ridden more at 30 than 25km/h, a speed at which early generation high rims were considered to have more advantages than disadvantages. And finally, as in normal races you can’t just switch bikes according to terrain, it’s pretty pointless to discuss climbs as a separate situation, the aero will have justified itself plenty during the rest of the ride.Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- If you look at how much TP progressed in that 1 1/2 years you can no longer say that’s nothing. If Remco improves as much he’s a challenger!Mistermaumau21-12-2024
- Froome wishing to ride the Vuelta...he won't even be selected for the team!frieders320-12-2024