Can Cavendish?
Manxman closes on record at the Tour de France
At 1.45pm this afternoon Mark Cavendish will set off from Quarter bridge Road in Douglas on the Isle of Man and attempt to win the national road title for the second time in his career.
There are strong sentimental reasons for Cavendish, a proud Manxman, wanting to do well.
Douglas is the town of his birth and today’s 120.6-mile route takes in many of the roads he trained on as a boy.
The race organisers, too, would be thrilled to see him do well. Along with fellow Manx rider and rival for today’s race, Peter Kennaugh (Team Sky), Cavendish was the major reason for bringing the championships to the Isle of Man for the first time since Robert Millar’s victory on the island in 1995.
But it is not sentimentality which will be on Cavendish’s mind today. Or even the possibility of being crowned champion, welcome though that would be. It is on the start of the Tour de France in Dusseldorf next weekend that he is training his sights. And his presence is by no means guaranteed.
Cavendish is still shaking off a bout of glandular fever and only returned at the Tour of Slovenia this month.
Although he finished second to Sam Bennett on the final stage there, and has shown no ill-effects since, his team admit there is no way of knowing whether he has beaten it for good. “Nobody is relaxing. Nobody is saying, ‘Hey, we’ve conquered this’. He’s being closely monitored,” Dimension Data sporting director Roger Hammond told Cycling News this week.
In normal circumstances, Cavendish might not risk coming back so soon. But these are not normal circumstances. The Manx Missile is on 30 career Tour stage wins, four behind Eddy Merckx. He is now 32 years old. Time is running out if he is going to pass the great Belgian.
He has to ask himself how he would feel if a week into the Tour he was sitting at home feeling as if he could be competing.
Two things are certain. Firstly, Dimension Data – who do not have an overall contender and will be stage hunting again – will give their star as much time as they can to make a decision. And secondly, the Tour would undoubtedly be the poorer without a fit and firing Cavendish, who memorably rolled back the years 12 months ago, claiming four stage wins, including the yellow jersey for the first time in his career, before abandoning to prepare for the Olympic omnium.
Whether he makes it or not, there will be no shortage of interesting narratives: from Peter Sagan’s attempt to wrap up a sixth straight green jersey in the colours of his new team, Bora-Hansgrohe, to Orica Scott rider Simon Yates’s attempt to emulate twin brother Adam and bag a top-10 result, to Chris Froome’s campaign to wrap up a fourth overall win in the past five years in the face of ongoing scrutiny of his team.
In purely sporting terms, Froome’s task would appear to be that much harder. Not only has the 32-year-old, like Cavendish, hardly raced this season, his rivals appear to be in half-decent nick, particularly Richie Porte. The Australian’s performance at the recent Critérium du Dauphiné was impressive, albeit BMC failed to deliver him to the finish on the final day, letting in Astana’s Jakob Fuglsang. Porte has a reputation for suffering a jours sans at some point in a three-week grand tour. But it should be remembered that last year – sharing leadership duties with Tejay van Garderen after several years as an understudy to Froome – he performed consistently. The Australian is, according to Froome, favourite for the Tour. But the Sky man may be playing mind games. BMC will do well to match the might of Sky. As will Nairo Quintana’s Movistar or Alberto Contador’s Trek-Segafredo.
Sky may be missing the diesel engine that is Ian Stannard this year [an ever-present in Froome’s three wins], while Wout Poels will not be reprising the role of super domestique which he performed so brilliantly 12 months ago. But they still
have a stellar cast list. Geraint Thomas, Luke Rowe, Vasil Kiryienka and Christian Knees have strength and experience in abundance, while in Mikel Nieve, Mikel Landa and Sergio Henao, Froome has a crack trio of climbing domestiques. The interesting selection is Michal Kwiatkowski, the former world road champion. It will be interesting to see if the Pole will be allowed to chase stage wins or required to bury himself for Froome. And whether Thomas – who got the chance to lead the team at the Giro, only for a badly parked police motorbike to scupper his bid – will be allowed to defend his GC position.
Sky’s biggest obstacle may well be the cloud that continues to hover after last autumn’s controversy over Sir Bradley Wiggins’s use of Therapeutic Use Exemptions and the UK Anti-Doping inquiry into the use of painkillers and corticosteroids, which is ongoing.
The team are making bullish noises. “We were racing there last week in the Critérium du Dauphiné and there was absolutely no change in the support,” Brailsford told Sky Sports. “Ever since we started it has been a hostile environment for us, so I expect no difference.” Time will tell. But this is a race, remember, which has seen fans jeer, punch and throw urine at Sky riders.
Froome has shown a remarkable ability to stay focused – to the extent that he ran up part of Mont Ventoux last year when his bike broke. He may need to put the blinkers on early this year if things turn ugly.