Julien Vermote has vivid memories of his first encounter with Mark Cavendish. “We had a fight,” he says, laughing. “In my first race as a professional I had a fight with Mark Cavendish."
It was the 2011 Tour Down Under and Vermote, a naive 21-year-old, wanted to impress on his Quick-Step debut by getting in the breakaway. Cavendish, however - a rider with 15 Tour de France stage wins already under his belt - had other ideas.
“I wanted to go in the breakaway but already a few riders had gone, and I tried to go across, but HTC were blocking the road, because they wanted to control the race. I tried to pass but then Cav goes to the right, you know… he wasn’t letting me through. He was on the front line and he was blocking me so I couldn’t pass.
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“But after the stage he came up to me and was like ‘ah sorry, sorry.’ At the race he apologised already and then in the hotel at dinner he came again to excuse himself. I was impressed, because I was a neo-professional and he came twice to excuse himself.”
Little did Cavendish know that this fresh-faced Belgian would become one of his most admired teammates, and also a close friend. Cavendish joined Quick-Step in 2013, with Vermote becoming part of his leadout train. After two years apart a reunion is imminent; Vermote has left Quick-Step Floors to join Cavendish at Dimension Data for 2018.
The 2013 Giro was where the relationship first blossomed, as Cavendish recounts in his 2013 autobiography, At Speed.
Own ambitions
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