CYCLING TOUR DE FRANCE: IN CYCLING, bunch sprints are usually won by inches. Mark Cavendish is starting to win them by margins that can be counted in seconds, just like a normal road stage.
Yesterday there were gasps of astonishment as he thundered towards the distant Arc de Triomphe, with his rivals in no position to offer even a token dispute. So brilliantly had Cavendish and his Columbia team manipulated the final kilometre of the race that Mark Renshaw, his lead-out man, was able to take an equally unchallenged second place.
“To cross the line with your arms in the air on the Champs-Elysees is one of the most best dreams you can have,” Cavendish said, “and it didn’t disappoint me. Hearing the crowd, riding on the cobbles, it’s a beautiful and proud feeling.”
His dominance in such circumstances is so absolute that it may never have been matched. For the Manxman now to lose in such circumstances would provoke inquests. And in winning the final charge up in front of an immense crowd, he wrote his name into the history of the Tour de France.
It was his sixth stage victory this year, overtaking the record of five sprint wins in a single Tour, set in 1976 and repeated in 1981 by the great Belgian speed merchant Freddy Maertens.
Just as remarkably, Cavendish’s half-dozen successes eclipsed the number of stage wins achieved by the riders of any single country in this year’s race. Four Spanish riders won a total of five stages, including two for the Tour’s overall winner, Alberto Contador, followed by France with three. No British rider has done that before. His personal total has reached double figures. He is still only 24.
Even Lance Armstrong, who finished third in the overall standings behind Contador and Andy Schleck, never achieved more than five stage wins in a single race while compiling his record seven consecutive Tour victories.
As the peloton rolled gently towards Paris from Montereau-Fault-Yonne yesterday Armstrong – riding a bike decorated with dead butterflies by Damien Hirst – and his Astana team-mates spent most of the time at the front. It was a familiar sight.
When he made his comeback to the race he monopolised for so long, the Texan did not intend to go unnoticed and now he has established a platform from which to launch his own team in 2010.
Third place in the final standings is a remarkable achievement for a man who will turn 38 in September and who spent three-and-a-half years off the bike. His fighting response to being attacked, first in Verbier and then on the Col de la Colombiere, won admiration.
If this year’s peloton had a patron, Armstrong was certainly the prime candidate, inspiring respect, awe and a measure of fear in the younger riders.
Contador, by contrast, cut a somewhat lonely figure, marginalised by his team in a way that made his solo attacks and his eventual victory all the more impressive.
The events of the first week suggested this was going to be a great Tour de France, which was not quite how it turned out. But the strongest rider wore the yellow jersey throughout the final week and the crowds appeared to be bigger than ever, particularly for the last two stages, which reached their climaxes in the magnificent and utterly contrasting theatres of the Mont Ventoux and the Champs-Elysees.
“With the end of the Tour de France,” the novelist Paul Fournel wrote, “the summer reaches its moment of sadness: long, hot afternoons and no longer anything to get your teeth into.” But plenty to chew over, for all that.
Guardian Service
