Mark Cavendish, record holder for victories in the Tour de France, retires – Libération

A strange criterium organized in Singapore, 10,000 kilometers from home. A 2.3 km circuit to be completed twenty-five times. One last battle against the biggest thighs in the world. And thus will end, Sunday November 10, the career of the greatest sprinter in the history of cycling. In a video posted this Saturday on his Instagram account, Mark Cavendish, 39, announced that he would give up cycling for good at the end of the weekend: “Sunday will be the last race of my career in professional cycling. Cycling has given me so much and I love this sport. I always wanted to leave my mark there and today I’m ready to see what the next chapter [de ma vie] reserves for me.”

The Briton’s upcoming retirement had been regularly announced for several years now. He himself often spoke of his «fatigue» and the temptation to say stop, to put an end to these days spent suffering with your butt screwed to the saddle, to stop elbowing at 80 km/h with riders ten or fifteen years younger than him. And then, when July arrived, when the elite of the peloton traveled across France for three weeks, Mark Cavendish, the Grande Boucle addict, was still there. “My life revolves around this race which is much bigger than cycling, he told Libé in 2018. Without her, there would be no more professional cycling.”

“He would prefer to limit himself to falling rather than having the reputation of someone who brakes”

If the native of the Isle of Man – a tax haven lost off the coast of the United Kingdom – returned every year, it was because he was chasing a goal worthy of his legend: that of doing better than Eddy Merckx and his 34 victories in the Tour de France. The record finally fell on July 3, in Saint-Vulbas, in the Ain plain. Three years after winning his 34th victory on the Grande Boucle, Mark Cavendish added a 35th, as a rogue and without a teammate to launch him to the line. The Belgian “erased” from the shelves, the circle was closed: Mark Cavendish could finally hang up the phone.

Lucid on arrival, he said: “Actually I’m tired. It’s my 15th Tour de France, it’s difficult just to be at the start. I’m getting older. Getting back into shape every year is hard.” Two weeks later, with the Tour over, he suggested he was probably done with professional cycling. He will finally treat himself to a few last laps in Asia before hanging up his time, for good. In two decades, Cavendish will have raised his arms 165 times (166 if he wins on Sunday), more than any other runner over the period. He has, among others, 17 stage victories on the Tour of Italy, three on the Tour of Spain, a world champion title in 2011 and a monument to his record, Milan-San Remo, in 2009.

For a long time, the British had a bad reputation. He was said to be rough, even dangerous in mass sprints, and a trickster in the mountains, the type to discreetly cling to cars to pass the passes on time. In the magazine Pedal in 2012, Frenchman Romain Feillu described the British rocket as a daredevil: “In a neck-and-neck corner, you have to be ready to brake just in case, because it’s not necessarily him who will do it first. In fact, I think he would rather fall than have the reputation of someone who slows down.”

Depression and pleasure in suffering

In the peloton, some will probably be delighted to see an opponent disappear whose buttocks they have seen so many times at the finish, unable to follow the rocket launched in the last meters. But most runners will be saddened to lose a gentleman who, over time, came to be appreciated, known as friendly and elegant, both with his teammates and his opponents. His confidences about the depression he went through for two years before the Covid-19 pandemic also made the robot more human in the eyes of many.

When things weren’t going well, Mark Cavendish could always take refuge in the bike. At Telegraph A few years ago, he explained the recipe for his success. This consists, basically, of taking pleasure in extreme effort, of appreciating when each pedal stroke becomes more painful than the previous one. “You know, the limit, when you go to the gym, you run on the treadmill and you start to feel the lactic acid building up and it starts to hurt, I mean, really hurt? In fact, I hold this limit for seven hours a day. It’s like someone is torturing you. Except you do it to yourself. The person who can hurt themselves the longest wins.” From Monday, Man’s missile will have to find another occupation, perhaps less sadomasochistic, to pass the time.