Tour de France: This Tour will be a change for Mark Cavendish

Published on 01/07/2012 01:22

IT IS a scenario that would have been impossible to imagine as recently as six months ago. Late on Friday afternoon, in a smart hotel in a suburb of Liège, the nine Team Sky riders appeared for their pre-Tour de France press conference, among them Mark Cavendish.

But the reigning world champion and proud wearer of the rainbow jersey was not the centre of attention.

Cavendish is also the reigning BBC Sports Personality of the Year, of course, and yet here, as the world’s biggest cycle race gets under way, he is not centre stage. Instead, another British rider is – Bradley Wiggins, the favourite for overall victory. Team Sky, it has become clear, has been built around Wiggins, with Cavendish, their highest-paid rider on a salary of more than £2 million a year, left to feed on scraps.

In his previous Tours, as he notched up 20 stage wins with extraordinary consistency – four in 2008, six in 2009, five in 2010, five in 2011 – Cavendish has been the main man. He had an entire team, HTC-High Road, at his service: eight riders absolutely devoted to the cause.

His lead-out “train” would take over towards the end of stages, five or six men riding in close formation, like an extended team pursuit, with Cavendish tucked in behind them, protected from the wind and the scrapping for position behind. Usually they executed to perfection, reeling in the breakaway, then ratcheting up the speed before, eventually, Cavendish’s lead-out man, Mark Renshaw, would hit the front with around 400 metres to go, swinging over 200m before the line. If all went to plan, Cavendish would then start his sprint, putting his nose in front for the first and only time in the stage. And, invariably, he would win.

Cavendish will not have that this year, or not on a regular basis. He more or less admitted it in London on Wednesday, the day before he headed to Liège. Asked if we would see a Team Sky lead-out train doing what HTC used to do so well, he said: “I don’t know. I haven’t set the team tactics. You’ll have to speak to the directors about that.”

Cavendish becomes a little tetchy when asked about this, as though he resents the implication that so many of his victories have owed so much to his team-mates. “I won the world championships without a lead-out train,” he points out. “I think I’ve proved time and time again that I don’t need a lead-out train.

“The thing with a lead-out train is that it guarantees you wins, rather than it just being a case of you can win. If a lead-out train means you win all the time, of course you want that. But, if you can be part of a team that wins the yellow jersey [with Wiggins], that’s a big, big thing.”

The irony here is that, if there is a perception that Cavendish is overly reliant on a lead-out train, it is arguably his own doing. It is Cavendish who makes a point of stopping beyond the line, waiting for his team-mates, then embracing them. When interviewed, he is quick to thank them and to say that he couldn’t have won without them, which is gracious but also as misleading as his suggestion that a lead-out train “guarantees” you the victory. This is only true if you happen to be Mark Cavendish, the fastest sprinter in the world.

Another change for Cavendish at this year’s Tour is that it will be his first as a father, with his daughter, Delilah, born in April. It might sound odd, but there are those who will consider this a potential weakness. It was Stuart O’Grady, the Australian rider, who admitted that, in the fraught bunch sprints, he would target the riders who were fathers and try to intimidate them by bumping shoulders and generally impeding them. His rationale was that they would be less willing to take risks and more likely to bottle it.

The recent Giro d’Italia, in which Cavendish won three stages and suffered one horrendous crash, suggested that he has not lost his bottle. And he rails against suggestions that he might be more cautious, more calculating.

“Having Delilah has made me more motivated,” he insists. “Every minute I’m away from her I have to make it count. I just want her to be proud of me.” He says she is a stabilising influence, too. “There was a stage at the Giro when there was a crash and my red jersey [for points leader] was out the window. Normally I’d have kicked off. But I crossed the line, saw [his partner] Peta and Delilah there, and I calmed down. I’m growing up. I’m 27 now, y’know?”

It could also explain Cavendish’s pragmatic approach to this Tour. He thinks he won’t win as many stages as in previous years, “but I’ve got other goals this year.”

He means the Olympic road race, six days after the Tour. Cavendish has lost weight to help him repeatedly get over Box Hill, and, for the first time in his career, has worked with a sports scientist, Tim Kerrison. Previously, he spurned this type of stuff as mumbo jumbo.

“I’ve come to realise it wasn’t the methods I didn’t like – it was how they were put to me,” explains Cavendish.

“Tim doesn’t think he’s cleverer that me because he’s been to university or that I’m an idiot without a brain because I ride a bike.”

It is the emotional, sentimental draw of the Olympics that might pull Cavendish through the Tour.

“The Tour is my job,” he says, “the Olympics isn’t my job. It’s just something I would love to win. It would be special, y’know?”

CAV’S PREVIOUS TOURS

2007 Team: T-Mobile

Stage wins: 0

Position: Did not finish

Green Jersey: N/A

2008

Team: High Road

Stage wins: 4

Position: Did not finish

Green Jersey: N/A

2009

Team: Columbia-High Road

Stage wins: 6

Position: 131st

Green Jersey: 2nd

2010

Team: HTC-Columbia

Stage wins: 5

Position: 154th

Green Jersey: 2nd

2011

Team: HTC-High Road

Stage wins: 5

Position: 130th

Green Jersey: Won