When you win, the world looks a rather different place. Following victory on stage 7 of the Tour de France in Fougères, his first of this race after two unsuccessful sprints, Mark Cavendish (Etixx-QuickStep) found mirth in unexpected places
Post-stage press conferences at the Tour are held via a two-way video link, to spare the winner and yellow jersey a long trudge to the press room. From his vantage point in a mobile broadcast unit near the finish line, Cavendish performed a double take at the monitor in front of him at one point during his conference on Friday.
"Is there a dude in the press room with socks on? Did I just see someone just in their socks?" Cavendish said, emitting a laugh that would not have been out at all of place in Tom Hulce’s portrayal of Mozart. "Yeah, there he is with his socks on."
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When unravelling the intricacies of a bunch finish, certainly, Cavendish operates on a different plane of understanding than just about everyone else. A reporter wondered what question he would most like to be asked, and it was perhaps telling that the Manxman offered his usual, forensic recap of the day’s bunch finish by way of response.
After opening his sprint too early and fading at both Zeeland on stage 2 and Amiens on stage 5, Cavendish got his lines right on the slightly uphill finishing straight in Fougères, choosing the right time to swap Alexander Kristoff’s wheel for that of his former teammate André Greipel. He came around Greipel inside the final 150 metres and then held him off for the win.
"The last two sprints the team have done good, but I’ve just kind of been too anxious, I’ve gone too early," Cavendish said. "That’s the thing about the Tour: in another race where you maybe wait, in the Tour you have to hit out. In another race there are maybe one or two guys who’ll come around you, in the Tour ten guys will come around you if you hesitate and then you lose the stage. I’ve just been a bit over-anxious the last two times and today’s been about not being impatient.
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