Cavendish still searching for elusive victory
Manxman finishes 10th after collision in sprint Merckx remains four Tour stage wins ahead
He is getting closer. But at this rate Mark Cavendish is going to run out of road before he can get up to full speed.
The Manxman saw another sprint opportunity come and go at the Tour de France yesterday. He was well positioned with about 200 metres to go to the finish in Chartres, level with triple world champion Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe) and just behind Dylan Groenewegen (Team Lottonl-jumbo) and Fernando Gaviria (Quick-step Floors). That, in itself, was progress of sorts.
However, a minor brush with Katusha’s Alexander Kristoff appeared to knock Cavendish off his stride at the crucial moment and the 33-year-old sat up, eventually crossing the line in 10th place.
It was another blow for Cavendish, who has had a difficult start to this year’s race, having arrived, by his own admission, undercooked following a number of crashes. He was honest enough to admit afterwards, though, that even without the contact he would not have had the legs to compete for the win.
“I was quite excited,” he told ITV. “And when I kicked … my power was pretty good, actually. But I had a little coming-together with Alexander Kristoff. It might’ve been my fault and it just stopped me dead.”
In another interview, with Eurosport, he admitted that he could “not match the speed” of Quickstep and Bora-hansgrohe once they went.
Cavendish’s improvement will not be enough to fend off the inevitable questions. Is he a spent force? Has he still got the speed to mix it with the younger sprinters? Groenewegen, who is potentially the fastest of the lot, got off the mark yesterday, comprehensively beating Gaviria to the line.
For Cavendish, the drought continues. Will he ever win another stage, let alone the four required to draw level with Eddy Merckx on 34? It will be two years on Monday since his last. One cannot help thinking back to that extraordinary summer of 2016, and wondering what Cavendish did differently back then.
Mainly, of course, he was in better nick, having raced a full programme in the build-up. But more than that, one cannot help but remember the importance Cavendish attached to the time he spent on the track that year. He had been forbidden from doing much track work by his previous team, Etixx-quickstep, but he made it a condition of his move to Dimension Data in 2016 that he would be allowed to target the Olympic omnium at Rio 2016.
Cavendish combined track and road that year, winning world Madison gold with Sir Bradley Wiggins in the spring of 2016, while his (ultimately unsuccessful) battle to land a spot in Great Britain’s pursuit team meant he arrived in France with his competitive juices flowing.
Whatever the missing ingredient, Cavendish will get one more chance today to compete for a stage win, when the race arrives in Amiens, before the sprinters take a back seat for a while.
A corner with 600 metres to go will ensure there is a scramble between the lead-out trains to put their sprinters in a good position. Groenewegen was Cavendish’s “one to watch” in his pre-tour guide for the BBC, due to his ability to accelerate out of corners.
“I just keep trying,” he said. “Our backs are against the wall all the time here. It’s not going to be easy to win, but we keep trying.”
An otherwise dull stage – the longest of the race at 231 kilometres, taking almost six hours – saw all the general classification riders come home safely in the bunch.
Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) remains second overall, although the Welshman is now six seconds off the lead after Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) picked up three bonus seconds at an intermediate sprint.