The Mark Cavendish comeback gathered pace on Thursday as he won his second stage in three days with a triumph on a day for pure sprinters along a 1.7km home straight in Chateauroux.
After a barren five-year spell on the Tour, the win on stage 6 took Cavendish’s tally on the world’s greatest bike race to 32, just two short of Belgian great Eddy Merckx’s all-time record of 34.
“Please don’t ask me that question,” Cavendish said at the line when asked about the record.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Nobody else dared, but the rider himself broached the subject.
“You can’t look at this as ‘there’s no two without three,’ let’s just take it one day at a time,” he said.
On a pancake-flat stage run over a scenic 160km route through the Loire Valley, Dutch rookie Mathieu van der Poel kept hold of the yellow jersey on a race that, for this first time this edition, passed off without any major incident.
The stage finished in actor Gerard Depardieu’s hometown, a city Cavendish knows well after two previous stage victories in 2008 and 2011 on a finale that suits out-and-out sprinting, and on Thursday he once again produced a deadly last-second pounce for the line.
“When I knew there was a finish here it didn’t make me feel romantic as such, but there’s this massive old school Tour de France sprint finish. Here, Paris and Bordeaux are the big sprint towns,” Cavendish said.
Two days ago Cavendish shook his head in disbelief after winning stage 4, but he was all grace and smiles after launching his 70kph finish after a sign from world champion teammate Julian Alaphilippe.
“It was less of a shock today than Tuesday’s win, we knew we could do it now, but it means just as much as that win,” said the 36-year-old, who kept the green jersey for best sprinter.
The man known as the “Manx Missile” dismissed any suggestion that the quality of sprinters remaining operational was diminished due to the crashes that marred the opening stages.
“I’m sorry about my friend Caleb Ewan, it would have been an honor to sprint against him,” he said of the Australian, who won three stages in 2019, but crashed out on stage 3.
“But look at the speed today. When I won here in 2011, 52kph was standard, now it’s 54 or 55 kph,” he said. “There’s an incredible group of sprinters here.”
Cavendish was without a team in December last year, but his old mentor Patrick Lefevere took him in at Deceuninck-Quick-Step, with a sponsor providing the salary.
In his old Belgian hunting grounds, Cavendish refound his smile after recovering from the Epstein Barr virus, an energy-sapping infection.
“What a story this is, something you couldn’t make up. It’s incredible,” Lefevere said at the finish line.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS