Not for the first time, Sir Mark Cavendish is ready for his final Tour de France and a last shot at another piece of history.
Twelve months ago, the Manxman had recently announced his impending retirement and went into what he thought was his final Tour seeking a stage win which would be the 35th of his career, giving him the record outright after matching Eddy Merckx on 34 in 2021.
He would come within just a few metres of that victory on stage seven into Bordeaux, hampered by a skipping chain, but a day later Cavendish left the race in an ambulance after breaking his collarbone in a crash.
It was not the way for one of cycling’s all-time greats to end his long association with the race that has defined so much of his career. Whether or not he would manage to win a stage, last year’s Tour was supposed to be a lap of honour – a farewell to his favourite race.
Ultimately, it was little surprise that Cavendish was subsequently persuaded by his family and his Astana-Qazaqstan team to ride on for one more year.
So here we go again. Cavendish, newly knighted in the King’s Birthday Honours, will be back on the start line.
Astana have gone all-in on Project Cavendish this time.
Last year, there were question marks over his lead-out train in a team with little sprint pedigree, so over the winter they brought in Michael Morkov and Davide Ballerini – two of the riders that helped him to win four stages of the 2021 Tour.
Preparations have been far from perfect. Cavendish, now 39, got off to a strong start to his season with an early win in Colombia, but things quickly went wrong after that.
He was forced to quit the sprinter’s paradise that is the UAE Tour in February as illness struck. He returned at Tirreno-Adriatico a month later but missed the time cut on a gruelling stage in the Apennines, a sure sign he was still struggling.
But Cavendish put that behind him when he beat Dylan Groenewegen to victory on stage two of the Tour de Hongrie, a morale-boosting win for him and the team.
The word from inside the camp is that Cavendish’s power numbers are close to those he was producing ahead of the 2021 Tour.
The final days before the Tour have seen Cavendish at a training camp in Athens, having spent the middle week in June racing at the Tour de Suisse.
Many of his rivals for the Tour sprints – Jasper Philipsen, Fabio Jakobsen, Tim Merlier and Olav Kooij – opted to race at the Baloise Tour.
Cavendish went for the more punishing Swiss race to hone his survival skills in the mountains, keenly aware of the unusually difficult start to this year’s Tour in Italy.
Tour organisers ASO say there are eight sprint stages on this year’s route, although closer inspection of some of those flatter days suggest the pure sprints will be limited to five.
Competition will once again be intense, but the number of observers suggesting Cavendish is too old to compete against the fastest riders on the planet seems to diminish each year – he has proven too many of them wrong too many times now.
But whether or not he gets to taste victory champagne again, Cavendish has another opportunity to end his Tour career on his own terms.
