Cavendish’s record of 35 Tour wins will take some time to be broken
It was not even 24 hours ago that we were talking about Mark Cavendish’s first four stages and the first ordeals that the Englishman had to endure to finally achieve his record for stages in the Tour de France.
However, that is what we are referring to, the recent history, the immediate past, because Cav’s relationship with the Tour de France is a story of breakups, sweet moments and reconciliations that has lasted for 16 years.
Place the image in 2008, the Tour of Carlos Sastrelook at the name and how distant it seems to us in the present.
In those days leading up to the Beijing Olympics, now that we are in the run-up to Paris, Cavendish was already putting obstacles in the way of his Tour record.
He was then competing for Columbia, having just returned from Telekom, where he enjoyed giving lessons in clean cycling and such.
In these years, Cavendish has had it all, moments in which he has won cleanly, but also others where he has made some messes, especially that time in the Tour of Switzerland, when he took out Henrich Haussler and Tom Boonen.
We all saw that, not like the ones that many accuse him of without any proof other than his word.
That was an outrage that should have cost him a year of leave, but no, he managed to get away clean and continue adding to Merckx’s record, who, by the way, was not a saint either.
In this time Cavendish has seen a thousand rivals come and go, at the same pace that he has entered and left the foreground.
Cavendish won a lot in the period from 2008 to 2013, He suffered like no one else the scourge of Marcel Kittelbut was able to return and based on flashes continue to increase the loot.
In 2016 he managed to become leader of the Tour and in 2021 he fattened up the chicken to be on par with Eddy Merckx.
I still remember some of his statements, I don’t know if before or after the pandemic, crying like a lost man in a Belgian classic, admitting that his retirement was a fact.
But This guy is made of another materialHe didn’t leave, no way, he resisted against all odds, even after announcing his retirement last year at the Giro.
When Cavendish found himself in the middle of a road in France a year ago, feeling like he might be making one last attempt, I knew he was going to continue for at least one more season.
Along the way, Mark Cavendish has sacrificed a lot and demanded more from his family – you can see this in the intimate moments on Netflix – to achieve this.
You may like it or not, you might think that he has been towed in half the Tour caravan, but he is there and achieving this is history that you have seen and that cannot be denied.
«You did it Mark«.
Image: ASO/Charly Lopez
2024-07-03 22:01:22
#Cavendishs #Tour #record #time #broken
