How Mark Cavendish became a Tour de France legend – according to fierce rivals and loyal teammates

Mark Cavendish as soon as gave me the look.

It was an interview in a lodge foyer in Yorkshire; he was barely late and apologised profusely, then answered questions in regards to the Tour de France with enthusiasm and element. For some purpose, I believed 10 minutes of flowing dialog made me his trusted confidant, so I regarded him within the eyes and requested: how a lot would you like to break Eddy Merckx’s Tour stage report? He shrugged it off. But what would it not imply to you? He went quiet. Wouldn’t it crown your legacy?

The look was someplace within the venn diagram of anger and disdain, and I half anticipated him to stroll off. He stayed, however in that transient second I felt the gentlest prod of his well-known spikiness. Cavendish was as soon as requested what he’d discovered from a tough day on the bike. “That journalists sometimes ask some stupid f***ing questions,” he replied.

Teammates, employees and rivals have all felt Cavendish’s sharp tongue. He would slam doorways if a stage didn’t go to plan. Helmets had been thrown.

“We stood on the bus after races and screamed at each other,” his former leadout man Mark Renshaw tells me.

Cavendish’s closest ally on the 2021 Tour, Michael Morkov, says of spending a month in one another’s pockets: “He’s definitely a character so it’s ups and downs. He has quite a temper.”

One of Cavendish’s biggest rivals, Marcel Kittel, tells a story from the Tour in 2012. “On the start line at different stages – it happened more than once – he was not happy with his bike computer and he was yelling and screaming at his mechanic, next to all the other riders. Everyone was just looking away [thinking] ‘you cannot do that Cav, it’s really crazy and it’s really disrespectful.’

“But everyone at the same time was like, ‘he can actually be a really nice guy’. It’s just… him.”

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Renshaw was Cavendish’s loyal lieutenant via a lot of his profession. On the floor there was little to unite a laid-back Australian with a hyped-up Manxman; one was stoic and calculated, the opposite usually emotional and impulsive. But Cavendish wanted Renshaw’s calm head on the highway, and their temperaments complemented one another.

“I don’t think you could have two Mark Cavendishs in a team and that would work,” Renshaw says gravely, as if genuinely disturbed by the picture he has created.

Cavendish disrupted the prevailing order right away, profitable 4 phases at his first Tour de France in 2008, and he was paired with Renshaw the next yr. Their first leadout was a mess however “within six months we had it pretty much down pat”.

Their first Tour collectively can be Cavendish’s most fruitful, profitable six phases in all, a uncommon feat (the report in a single Tour is eight). The spotlight was undoubtedly the final day in Paris, profitable on the Champs-Elysees the place Renshaw completed behind him in a one-two. It was proof that Renshaw may have been a winner in his personal proper, and “the world’s best leadout man” was quickly recognised, not least by Cavendish who would eulogise about his buddy.

Renshaw’s transient was to lead Cavendish via the melee and current him close to the end like a king on a cushion. He was sat nav, windshield and safety operation multi function. “If I had to ride in the wind, if I had to move him up in a hard section… I’d do that bodyguarding around the peloton, because you’re not the most popular rider when you’re winning five stages in the Tour.”

Renshaw may have been jealous or aggressive however he knew that they had been totally different animals. “Stack us up against each other in training and I could get close. But where there’s a finish line and a big prize, he just goes that 1 or 2 per cent deeper than anybody else, he goes that little bit harder, hurts himself a little bit more. He’s got that extra drive and that cunning decision-making you need to be a winner.”

The staff held a deep respect for Cavendish. “When he walked into the room, everyone lifts because they know he’s the best,” says Renshaw. And what stood out past the burgeoning assortment of trophies and jerseys was a distinctive capacity to take care of setbacks, to thrive in them.

“One of the moments that most shocked me was the year he had a massive crash in the Tour de Suisse. He took off skin from the top of the shoulders to his butt cheek – he took off his whole back. And he turned around two weeks later for the Tour and was straight back into winning. I just didn’t see that in many other riders.”

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Cavendish was a nightmare to race in opposition to. His interval of sprinting dominance was akin to Roger Federer or Tiger Woods, notably on the Tour de France. There had been 180 of the world’s most athletically excellent people on the startline competing for 21 phases, and for many riders simply profitable one was an unqualified success. Cavendish gained 23 phases between 2008-2012, at 4.6 phases per Tour.

He was smaller and lighter than lots of his rivals, a tightly wound ball of muscle, and his largest weapon was his explosive acceleration. He had an erratic, swaying model that was uncommon and intriguing to followers and the media. By his second yr he had developed an aura. He was undisputedly the quickest man on this planet. Rivals had been overwhelmed by centimetres on the end line, however they’d already misplaced to his presence in the beginning.

“For me, Cav was the man to beat,” says Marcel Kittel, the German sprinter who gained 14 Tour phases and developed a fierce rivalry.

Cavendish’s relationship with Renshaw was essential, however following a leadout wasn’t his solely means to win. He might be out of the image, his teammates nowhere to be seen, and quietly surf wheels to the entrance to pickpocket a victory somebody thought they owned. “He behaved unpredictably,” Kittel tells The Independent. “He always made it difficult to anticipate his next move.”

Off the bike their relationship might be “uncomfortable”, Kittel says, nevertheless it was additionally stuffed with respect. “He hates to lose and after the finish you can really feel that – for me it’s the same. But in 2013 he was congratulating me after my first stage win and saying ‘this is going to change your life’. He was welcoming me on the top level of sprinters. He made that step towards me, not away.”

Since our interview in Yorkshire in 2019, Cavendish equalled Merckx’s tally of 34 wins and now stands one away from writing extra historical past in his last Tour de France. Kittel is already retired and commentating on the Tour at 35, and lately they change tales within the paddock. They are united by a shared expertise that few perceive: the way it feels when the legs burn with the wind in your face, with one other rider hip-to-hip in a tunnel of deafening noise.

But for all that they share, Kittel factors out that they had been very totally different athletes. “He is into the history of the sport, he loved the past legends and the stories. I have a different perspective on cycling: I enjoyed it, and I still enjoy it, but I didn’t have ambitions to write history.”

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The autumn of Cavendish’s profession has been stuffed with adversity: the brutal crash in Vittel that put him out of the 2017 Tour with a damaged shoulder, for which Peter Sagan was disqualified; struggles with psychological well being; repeated bouts of the Epstein-Barr virus which left him barely ready to journey.

His return to the Tour de France, with QuickStep in 2021, was solely via a stroke of fortune when the staff’s lead sprinter Sam Bennett suffered a knee damage; Cavendish was paired up with Bennett’s famend leadout artist, the steely Danish rider Michael Morkov – one other former rival on observe and highway.

As with Renshaw, they saved lacking one another of their first race on the Tour of Belgium, so earlier than the Tour de France, Morkov and Cavendish sat down for a frank dialog.

“I had the feeling we were not really united to be honest, maybe not on the same page,” Morkov tells The Independent. “I said to him, ‘look, I really believe that you can win a stage here in France’. I think coming there he didn’t really believe he could win, but when I said that to him, I could really see that light in his eyes. He was ready.”

Their first win collectively required some improvisation after a crash scuppered their leadout practice close to the end. “I moved him up and dropped him off at the front with 500m still to go. When I came to the finish line I could not believe it when he said he actually won.”

There was intense expectation on the dash phases at QuickStep, but additionally large strain to get Cavendish via the mountains contained in the cut-off dates every day to keep away from elimination, most notably the brutal double ascent of Mont Ventoux.

“Cav was really on the limit that day, he’s in the zone, he doesn’t reply. Then we pass the monument of Tom Simpson [the British rider who died on Ventoux in 1967] and suddenly he stops, pulls off his helmet and he bows to the monument. We were so nervous because he was on the limit to finish the stage.

“Then we have to pass the monument again. I went to him and I said, ‘mate, I admire that you make a salute for the monument, but please stay focused because we are five guys here who worked the whole day to get you through’. So he went to the car and he picked up a cycling cap, and when we passed the monument again he threw the cap and made another ‘hello’ to Tom Simpson. I think we made the time limit with less than a minute.”

When they ultimately completed, Cavendish slumped because the teammates who had shielded him from the wind bumped fists and patted backs like they’d gained one other stage.

“For me it’s actually a typical Cav story,” says Morkov. “Because even though there is so much pressure, he always searches for something deeper than just winning the races.”

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Fundamentally, you’ve got to be clinically insane to be a sprinter. Humans shouldn’t have any want to journey a bike at 50mph, shoulder to shoulder with different maniacs whereas sporting lycra. But elite sprinters are wired otherwise. Cavendish competes together with his feelings on the sting as a result of it’s on the sharp edges of biking that he has constructed his profession, the place success is measured by milliseconds.

To thrive and to win, Cavendish wants to be at his most intense; he wants to stroll into a room and demand every thing from everybody, together with himself. And the one means to get himself there may be to really feel strain, like flames on the pores and skin.

“He’s much quieter in real life,” says Renshaw. “I think you only see the 15 minutes of fame sometimes. Yeah, we didn’t just sit around a campfire and sing. We bloody went head to head with the best in the world.”

In some ways he has gone full circle. Cavendish arrived as a disruptor, an outsider – an “underdog”, as he referred to as himself in his ebook, “who learned to scrap and scratch because it was the only way for me to survive”. Now, greater than ever, he’s the underdog once more. Few consider he’s the quickest within the peloton now, and that’s extra gasoline.

He has introduced Renshaw again into his nook for this last Tour, who’s consulting Cavendish’s new Astana teammates on leadout precision and, presumably, your entire Mark Cavendish Experience. This is his final probability to surpass Merckx, and he’ll give every thing to do it.

“Do you know what bothers me,” Cavendish stated just lately. “Everyone calls it Merckx’s record. It’s not Merckx’s record, it’s our record. I won’t break his record; I’ll break our record.”

He’s agitated. He cares deeply. Just don’t maintain asking him about it.