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Peta Cavendish did not actually see the moment her husband Mark won his record-breaking 35th career Tour de France stage, but somehow she knew it was coming all day.
Peta and the couple’s children were waiting just beyond the finish line of stage five in Saint-Vulbas. They watched on a TV screen but the time delay meant Mark had his arms aloft before they saw the sprint unfold.
“I find it very stressful, watching a sprint, it’s not something I’ve ever liked,” Peta told the PA news agency. “I’m used to it now, but not seeing the last 100 metres was probably for the best because I don’t know if my heart could have taken it.
“We’d had a feeling all day. There’s only a few times I can say I’ve had that feeling from the beginning of the day to the end.”
Twelve months after Mark crashed out of what was supposed to be his final Tour – and after years marked by illness, injury and depression – the 39-year-old stood alone in Tour history.
“I was so relieved,” Peta said. “Not because we had the record. Everything that everybody had worked for had come together… There were always going to be more opportunities but there was relief it was done.
“As much as you can enjoy the suffering of the next two-and-a-half weeks, he could try to enjoy his last Tour de France knowing he’d achieved what he set out to achieve.”
Planning for this moment began almost the moment Mark broke his collarbone on stage eight of last year’s Tour – with Peta driving 120 miles to see him in hospital.
“He wasn’t great, but better than I thought he was going to be,” she recalled. “He was like, ‘What do I do now?’ I looked at him and said, ‘I think we know what we do now’. He just said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know’.”
The message from Astana-Qazaqstan boss Alexander Vinokourov was clear.
“‘Vino’ was like, ‘We go again’,” Peta said. “(Cavendish) was still saying, ‘I don’t know’ but I was like, ‘I don’t know why we’re pretending this isn’t going to happen’.”
For Peta and their five children, it meant another season with Mark on the road. He has spent just three weeks at home this year.
“I honestly don’t remember much different,” Peta said. “I love Mark, I would much prefer to be with him all the time, but I’m also quite independent, I’ve got like 6,000 children so I’m never sitting here twiddling my thumbs!
“My big thing is, I know it’s not forever… It’s hard for the kids but they’ve never known anything different. Apart from the youngest, she’s only two, they understand. They see him on TV and they can make sense of where he is and what he’s doing.”
When Cavendish won four stages of the 2016 Tour to reach 30, it seemed a matter of time before he broke Eddy Merckx’s long-standing record of 34.
But after contracting the Epstein-Barr virus, the Manxman suffered a series of setbacks culminating in a diagnosis of depression. He won four stages in 2021 in an incredible comeback but was denied the Hollywood ending of hitting 35 in Paris.
Not selected in 2022, crashing out in 2023, the chance might have gone but Saint-Vulbas delivered the final twist in an incredible story.
“I said to Mark, ‘I know it would have been easier if you’d won on the Champs-Elysees in 2021, it would have been a lovely fairytale, but these last two years have been pretty exciting’,” Peta said.
“If you were making a film you’d put these two years in. I think it’s perfect for who Mark is and what he’s done in the sport. That never-say-die attitude has got him where he is so to bookend his career with that mentality is perfect.”
