The 2023 Tour de France gets underway on the 1st July 2023, with the Grand Depart leaving Bilbao. This year’s tour promises to be one for the ages, with a number of sub-plots running through one of sport’s most unique tests of endurance. The fight for the general classification could be a two horse race, as cycling appears to be standing on the precipice of an era defining rivalry, which also heralds the end of British cycling’s golden age of success.
Can Tadej Podjacar continue the dominant form he showed prior to breaking a wrist at Liege-Bastogne-Liege? Or will Jonas Vingegaard take yellow in Paris, having won the Criterium de Dauphine with the largest winning margin since 1987? The battle between these two champions could be one for the ages.
Whilst the battle for the yellow jersey is a mouth watering prospect, that isn’t where I will be focussing my attention as a spectator. For me, the biggest intrigue doesn’t lie in the mountains, it is in the sprint stages.
Specifically, with Mark Cavendish’s 14th and final appearance in the Tour de France. Cavendish is attempting to claim a 35th stage win, and break Eddy Merckx’s record for most stage wins in the process.
There are few sports which venerate their legends in the way that cycling does. The mere mention of some of cycling’s past colossus’ is enough to send ardent fans into a misty eyed reverie. Merckx was known as the Cannibal because of the voracious way in which he devoured his rivals on the road.
Bernard “the Badger” Hinault was brilliant and ruthless in equal measure, the last true patron of the peleton- a mafia boss on two wheels who ruled the peleton with an iron fist.
But cycling suffered an identity crisis in the years after the Lance Armstrong scandal and needed a champion. Cavendish has been a standard bearer through those years and should be celebrated alongside those heroes of old.
Cavendish also played a huge part in cycling moving from niche interest in the UK, to being part of the sporting mainstream.
I first saw Cavendish on the road in the 2005 Tour of Britain, safely nestled in the pack as they climbed up what would become the Cote d’Oxenhope Moor when the Tour de France came to the UK in 2014. That day there was just a handful of hardy souls who turned out to watch. Quite the contrast to the thronging mass who packed the streets 9 years later.
In Richard Moore’s award winning book Étape, he is described as the boy with fire in his eyes and the greatest sprinter of his, or perhaps any, generation. Shorter in stature than his peers, but a compact ball of power, built to explode down the home straight, the embodiment of his nickname – the Manx Missile.
Cavendish is to cycling what Usain Bolt was to track sprinting, physically unique, but devastating in his prime. Cavendish would be the first to admit that his prime has now passed, but the fire still burns in the eyes of this era defining athlete.
His win in Rome at the Giro d’Italia proves that he still has the potential to upset the odds and beat his younger rivals. Living up to his Cannonball nickname, having received a lead out from ex-teammate and long time friend, Geraint Thomas, Cavendish rolled back the years on the cobbles of Rome to secure a stage victory in his final Giro. Emotional scenes at the finish saw Cavendish and Thomas embracing, two titans of British cycling raging against the dying of the light.
Sporting fairy tales aren’t always guaranteed, as proven by Chris Froome missing out on selection for this year’s tour and struggling to recover from a devastating crash in 2019. Cavendish has suffered his own injuries along the way and has always had to fight for his place in the history books.
But the very best athletes seem to be able to write their own scripts through sheer force of will. It would take a brave person to bet against Mark Cavendish roaring up one of the sprint finishes in this year’s tour and cementing his place at the top of cycling’s list of greats.
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