timeMark Cavendish’s seemingly bottomless motivation has won him legions of admirers throughout his career as he overtakes Eddy Merckx to hold the record for Tour de France stage wins. But it also angered his competitors and sometimes even his own teammates.
Wednesday’s victory at Saint-Vulbas took his 55th Grand Tour stage win, including 35 at Le Tour, the Giro d’Italia )’s 17 victories and three victories in the Vuelta a España have won worldwide plaudits and outraged people from all over the world.
“He’s a nice guy to talk to, but if you’re at the end of a sprint he can be a headache,” said Alpercin-Deseninck teammate Silvan Dillier. “Also raced against Cavendish on the track.
One of the people who knows Cavendish best is veteran team manager Patrick Lefevere, who had the British sprinter under his wing twice, from 2013 to 2015 and from 2021 to 2022.
“That desire was always there inside of him,” Lefevere said. “He has had bad luck many times. The year before he came to us in 2021, no one believed in him.
Lefevere even admitted that he had been among those who questioned the wisdom of Cavendish’s decision to delay retirement until the end of 2024. On the first day of the tour, when I saw him fall, I thought: ‘Oh no! It was definitely one year too many,’ but the next day I saw he was doing much better.”
“I know him very well,” the Belgian said. “I saw that he was doing better on the second day of pedaling than on the first day, and I thought: ‘If he survives the Galibier Pass, [on stage four] Then be careful.
Cavendish was a talented sprinter who also had a compulsive perfectionist streak. Like Roy Keane, he leads by example and expects those around him to follow suit. Like Keane, he had feuds with some of his rivals, such as retired sprinter Heinrich Hausler.
“I have no respect for him as a rider or as a person,” Hausler said after the pair fell out with Cavendish early in his career.
There have been domestic squabbles, such as with Bradley Wiggins at the Beijing Olympics, whose performance at the Madison left Cavendish the only member of the cycling team without a medal.
He slammed doors, threw helmets, grabbed tape recorders. In July 2021, after winning four stages of that year’s Tour de France, he was filmed on his mobile phone berating his mechanics at the start of stage 19. he yelled, then stormed back to the team bus and hurled a slew of expletives.
Cavendish apologized within hours, saying: “I should not have reacted like that,” adding: “They know how small I get when I’m stressed and no one deserves to speak to them. ‘”
Lefevere smiled when asked if his former rider was a perfectionist. “That’s not always the case,” he said. “When he came to us after one winter he had gained 10 kilograms, but he always became sharp again.”
“He’s kind of: ‘I love you, I hate you.'” But if he tells you where to go, his virtue is that he comes back and says, ‘I’m sorry.’
“During the years when he was not on our team,” Lefevere recalled, “I went to London a few times. If I didn’t let him know I was there, he would get angry. He always invited me to the best restaurant. He never asked to see the color of my money. He was a gentleman in that sense.
Now, with the commitment of his team, Cavendish may win more stages in this Tour de France. There is no doubt that Merckx, as winner of Grand Tours and Classics, time trials and summit races, eclipses the 39-year-old’s achievements, but never has a cyclist’s anger at success been so intense, for so many people Let’s talk about the new year.
