CAV’S HARD ROAD BACK
Illness leaves sprint king in the slow lane
ONLY a few weeks ago Mark Cavendish was out on training rides being overtaken by people on bikes with shopping baskets and one individual wearing his helmet back to front.
The problem, Cavendish was keen to explain yesterday in the hope the gentleman in question has not boasted to too many people about the day he saw off the finest sprinter in Tour de France history, was that his doctor had limited him to a heart rate of 100 beats per minute.
Cavendish was still recovering from glandular fever, and listening to him describe his disrupted preparation makes it all the more remarkable that he decided on Monday to line up with his Dimension Data colleagues in Dusseldorf for the Tour’s Grand Depart this weekend.
He will do so, he says, some way short of optimum fitness and having temporarily moved out of the family home. ‘When you are ill, the one thing you want around is family, comfort, support,’ he says. ‘But when I was ill, the kids around, food in, when you have nothing to do it’s very easy to eat with the family.
‘I said, “If I’m not on my bike, I’m going to get fat”. So I went away from my family, back to Italy, lying in bed so I didn’t put that weight on.’ A blood test detecteddgl an du larldlf fever .‘ I was racing Abu Dhabi on it, and won there,’ he says. ‘And I raced Tirreno and San Remo on it, too. I knew even when I won in Abu Dhabi something wasn’t right.
‘After San Remo I went for my quarterly blood test with the UCI, routine blood tests to check we are healthy or not cheating. It came up that I was ill. I’d been racing on it for a month and made myself worse.’
He was off the bike for three weeks. ‘I was walking up the stairs and just had to lie down,’ he says. ‘I was on my hands and knees. It was horrible. But when I felt better I started to ride again, to stop myself going crazy. I started to get a couple of hours in to maintain muscle memory.
‘I was getting passed not even by amateurs in full kit, but by people with their helmets back to front. Bikes with shopping baskets.’
Adding to his tally of 30 Tour stage wins, in pursuit of Eddie Merckx’s record of 34, will be difficult this year. ‘I am still three, four weeks behind where I ideally want to be,’ he says.
‘I will have to sprint in the first week knowing my chances are very slim with the hope I might be on form by the third week.’
So, he won’t be pulling out before the Tour reaches the mountain stages? ‘If I was planning on bailing, I wouldn’t be going to the Tour at all,’ he says. ‘I believe I am the best sprinter on the planet. And without this illness, I would be looking to pass the (Merckx) record this year. It’s something I have to put to the back of my mind now.’