"How long does he have?" asks one fan to another, waiting outside the Astana-Qazaqstan team bus on the promenade in Rimini. "25 minutes have gone," the second replies. "I think he's going to make it."
Mark Cavendish was not expected to be the story on stage one of the Tour de France. But after dropping from the peloton early, appearing to vomit, and lagging deeper behind on time, a worry began to sprout.
Around a hundred people gathered by the Brit’s sky blue bus after the stage. They watched the minutes tick by on their phones, the anxiety growing as each one went by. Finally, over 39 minutes after the winner, Romain Bardet, crossed the line, a roar came from the masses down by the finish line.
Filing through them, still on his teammate Michael Mørkøv's wheel, Cavendish came trundling towards safety. He had endured almost six hours in the saddle, and staved off the time cut with 10 minutes to spare.
The Brit said nothing when he put his feet on the floor. Wearing a dazed expression – his mouth ajar and bottom lip hanging low – Cavendish calmly rested his bike against the bus, and puffed his cheeks out. He then pushed the curtain in the doorway aside, and disappeared up the stairs.
The crowd noise fell to a curious hum. Five minutes later, the curtain swung back again, and summoned by cries of his name, the sprinter stepped back outside. His first words revealed the reason for his suffering.
"It was the heat," Cavendish told the press. "Look, we know what we're doing. It's not easy. Like I always say, if you've got my body type now, don't start cycling, because those days have gone. But we know what we're doing. It doesn't mean it's easy. We're not riding round talking."
Throughout the stage – a dizzying 200km hack through the Tuscan hills – Cavendish was kept company at the back of the race by teammates Mørkøv, Cees Bol and Bram Welten. The trio tried their best to keep their sprinter cool in the 35C heat, pouring water into his helmet, and stuffing ice cubes down the back of his jersey.
How had Cavendish found the day? "That was so hard," he said. "That was so hard, but we had a plan and we stuck to it. Ok, I would have liked to have stayed one more climb with the peloton, but I was seeing stars, really. It was so hot. We're happy we made it through. We're ok."
While his fans feared the worst, Cavendish counted back the minutes he would be granted to finish the stage. Had he missed the time limit, he might have been turfed off his farewell Tour.
"You can work out what the front guys are going to do, then you work out what you can do, what you need to do to get in the time limit," he explained. "[It] isn't really to try and put people out of the race. It’s there when people are sick and injured, to stop them carrying on. Obviously it makes a nice story when you’re close to it. Like I said, we kind of had it all under control."
The sighs of relief beside the team bus, however, suggested his fans weren't always so convinced. One day down, "onto stage two," Cavendish said. For now, the dream of a record-breaking 35th stage win lives on.
