Mark Cavendish has admitted he will never again be the sprinter he was as he closes in on Eddy Merckx’s all-time record for stage wins in the Tour de France.
Cavendish is already the most successful sprinter in the history of the Tour, and needs four more stage wins to match the 34 achieved by Merckx.
But as he arrives in France for the start of his 12th Tour, Cavendish recognises he is no longer the rider that won 20 stages in the space of four years between 2008 and 2011.
That younger, more edgy Cavendish is gone.
“I’m 33 with four kids at home,” he said.
But also gone is the rider who won four stages in 2016 before leaving the Tour early to focus on the Rio Olympics.
That version of Cavendish disappeared last summer, when he suffered a broken shoulder in a stage-four crash with world champion Peter Sagan, who was controversially disqualified. The shoulder was surgically repaired, but will never be fully fixed.
“I can’t really put the weight on it to get so far over the handlebars as I did, I can’t pull on the handlebars like I did,” Cavendish said.
“I’m not the first person to have an injury. You try and deal with it and I’ll make sure I’m stronger elsewhere in my body.”
That crash in Vittel has been part of a catalogue of setbacks for Cavendish over the past 18 months, from the Epstein-Barr virus that almost prevented him starting the Tour at all last year, to his somersault over a central reservation in Milan-Sanremo earlier this year or his farcical crash at the Abu Dhabi Tour, caused by the automated brakes on an officials’ car.
There have been so many tumbles that Cavendish felt moved to defend his bike handling.
“Two crashes in a year is not too bad,” he said, perhaps discounting the one caused by a mechanical failure at Tirreno-Adriatico. “Some guys crash more than that in a race, but that’s something that the mainstream press don’t really dwell on.”
Saturday’s opening stage from Noirmoutier-en-l’Ile to Fontenay-le-Comte offers the prospect – if crosswinds do not interfere on the Vendee coastline – of a sprint finish, and with it the chance for a sprinter to don the yellow jersey.
That is something Cavendish did for the only time in his career to date two years ago with victory at Utah Beach in Normandy, but the opportunity of a repeat will not change his approach this weekend.
“We’ll try our best for sure, obviously it’s always nice when a sprinter gets an opportunity to get the yellow jersey,” he said. “But the yellow jersey won’t change our approach. It’s a stage and we’ll try to win that stage.”
Yellow is a target already ticked off for Cavendish – now it is all about catching Merckx.
“In terms of races I can physically win, I’ve pretty much done everything” he said. “(Merckx) is really the only target I have left. It seems so close yet it is a big distance away.
“I always say one stage makes a rider’s career, let alone multiple stages or multiple stages in multiple years. It’s harder than it looks but fortunately I’m in a place with Team Dimension Data where they trust I’ll do everything I can to do it and they support me, and put a team behind me to do it.
“If it’s not this year so be it, but I’ll try to get it before the end of my career, that’s for sure.”
