"Finally, you broke the world record." These are the words Casper Cavendish greeted his dad, Mark Cavendish, with after the rider won stage five of the 2024 Tour de France, his 35th, beating Eddy Merckx's record in the process. "We knew, didn’t we," Mark Cavendish smiles as he makes it back to the team bus after all the razzmatazz a stage winner - a record-breaking one at that - has to go through.
These insights are two of many revealed in a new documentary released by his team, Astana Qazaqstan, on Tuesday, called Project 35. The film provides a look inside the team bus and car, as well as training camps, as Cavendish made history in July, and then battled to the end of the Tour, his last.
The story will be familiar now to most, of Cavendish given a lifeline by Astana to get one more stage win in 2023, of crashing out of that year's Tour, and then forging on for one more season to clinch the record.
However, Project 35 goes behind the scenes to present a new angle of the journey the 39-year-old went on, the triumph, and also the struggles that he faced, even early at this year's Tour.
Stage one of the Tour was difficult for Cavendish, with the brutal course not made for a sprinter, all done in the heat of an Italian summer.
"Things didn’t go to plan," Astana sports director Mark Renshaw says in the documentary. "He was dropped early in the climb and we predicted he would have held on for a bit longer. The focus of the day shifted to minimising damage, coming to the final safely inside the time delay."
Cavendish's teammate Michael Mørkøv is seen telling the team car: "He’s completely overcooked, from when we started the climb." Cavendish himself adds: "It’s tight, the skinsuit is so tight. Mate, I’m so blocked."
However, the Manxman successfully makes it through the day, and the next three. Renshaw telling him over the radio "bibbidi-bobbidi-boo", from Disney's Cinderella, apparently has a great impact at one point.
Then, stage five, the big day from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Saint Vulbas comes, and is nicely foreshadowed by Renshaw telling the team which side of the road to be on in the final.
The moment itself is huge for the whole team, with Renshaw's car pausing for a moment before realising what has actually happened. Davide Ballerini, one of his leadout men, was fined for stopping to watch the moment on the big screen: "They took our prize money away for that. It was really beautiful."
Mørkøv reveals in the documentary that he had doubts: "Around 1km to go I realised I couldn’t help you anymore, so I might as well let you go. Cross my fingers that you will make a result. And suddenly someone was screaming in my ear. But I was still waiting a bit because I could not really believe you’d won that sprint."
Post-podium, on the bus, Cavendish tells his team: "I couldn’t have hoped for, wished for, spending my time with better people than I have here. Thank you all for the belief, for every single minute you have put into this." He puts it much more succinctly at dinner: "I’m speechless, thank you so much. I love everyone."
The rest of the Tour is a bit of a grind, with Renshaw revealing that Cavendish had a bit of a "difficult period" getting back into racing again after his victory, which is understandable, after history was made. Then it's just the small matter of the Pyrenees and the Alps to get through, before a happy ending in Nice.
