EQUAL AMONG FIRSTS 34

Mark Cavendish’s incredible comeback at the 2021 Tour de France, in which he won four stages and equalled Eddy winning record was the biggest story of the race. Procycling looks at the Manx sprinter’s achievement

Writer Edward Pickering /// Images Chris Auld

M A R K C A V E N D I S H

When the 2021 Tour de France route was revealed last year, fans with long memories might have noted that parts of it looked like a compilation of Mark Cavendish’s greatest hits. Fougères, the finish town of stage 4, was the location of his 26th number one in 2015 Châteauroux, two days later, was an even more important part of the Cavendish narrative - it’s where his first and 17th stage wins happened. Nîmes (win no. 4) and of course Paris (nos. 10, 15, 20 and 23) were also on the itinerary.

Not that anybody was considering at that point the possibility of Cavendish even being at the Tour, let alone adding any stage victories to the career total of 30 he’d been frozen on since 2016 -a lot of things had to happen between the end of 2020 and June 2021 for that to transpire.

The ‘Sliding Doors moment’ is a beloved cliché of historians and writers. It describes incidents which alter a life’s trajectory and change future events. Sometimes it’s epiphanic, sometimes a nudge, but in retrospect it is highly consequential. In Cavendish’s case, there was a whole series of sliding doors moments -a sequence of improbable events which opened up a pathway to the four stage wins that he took.

Towards the end of 2020, Cavendish looked washed up and beaten. In an emotional mixed zone interview after Gent-Wevelgem, he admitted that he might be riding his last races as a professional, following four very lean years during which Epstein Barr virus, clinical depression and poor form had ravaged his career. His Bahrain-McLaren team were not renewing his contract, and options were few. It was only when Deceuninck-Quick Step offered him a ride on the condition he brought a sponsor in with him that he secured employment for 2021, and it looked like the legendarily pragmatic and unemotional Patrick Lefevere had for once made a decision with his heart and not his head. Observers assumed that he would get to bow out quietly, but on his own terms. That contract was the first sliding doors moment.

6 Cavendish’s highest number of wins in a single Tour