There was a time when Mark Cavendish’s stage wins at the Tour de France seemed almost routine, like the setting of the sun or the rising of the tides. The road to his record-breaking 35th victory was much more complicated, but that only added to the emotion for the Isle of Man rider, who won stage 5 in St Vulbas on Wednesday afternoon.
The final sprint was chaotic, as is often the case in the modern Tour, but Cavendish has imposed his order in such situations since he was barely out of his teens. He delivered a blistering sprint to beat Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X Mobility) to the line, breaking the record he had shared with Eddy Merckx since 2021.
At 39, Cavendish surely cannot possess the same pace that took him to his first Tour victory in Chateauroux in 2008. He has, however, always been able to read the changing contours of a bunch sprint better than anyone and find the most viable route to his goal, and that was the key to his triumph here.
When Cavendish lost his leader Michael Mørkøv in the race, he immediately found his bearings by latching onto Philipsen’s rear wheel. But as the peloton entered the straight, he realised the sprint sand was shifting and he dove into Pascal Ackermann’s wheel before launching himself with just over 100 metres to go.
Cavendish’s initial acceleration gave him a head start, and he maintained his speed all the way to the line, taking a clear victory over Philipsen and Kristoff, his 35th on cycling’s biggest stage.
The Manxman had already equalled Merckx’s record at the 2021 Tour, when he took four wins after being called up late to the QuickStep squad. He missed the chance to claim the record when it was broken on the Champs-Élysées, and it looked as though the opportunity had slipped away from him completely when he was left out of the team’s 2021 selection.
Last year, after a tumultuous winter, Cavendish found refuge in Astana and came very close to that elusive 35th victory in what he had announced would be his final Tour. However, a crash and retirement on stage 8 convinced him to reconsider.
The 2024 Tour was supposed to be his last dance, but despite victories in the Giro d’Italia and the Giro d’Hungaria earlier this year, it was far from certain that he would add points to his tally. Cavendish’s prospects looked even slimmer when he suffered sunstroke on the demanding opening stage of this race, reaching Rimini almost 40 minutes behind schedule.
Cavendish, of course, is never more dangerous than when the odds seem stacked against him. For the past sixteen years, it has been very ill-advised not to take Cavendish for granted, and that is still the case on this Tour, his last.
“I can’t believe it,” Cavendish said. “Astana took a big gamble this year, to make sure we’re good at the Tour de France. We took a gamble to win at least one stage and that’s a big gamble for my boss, Alex Vinokourov. It shows that a former cyclist knows what the Tour de France is all about. You have to go all out.”
Cavendish’s whirlwind interview was interrupted by a hug from Vinokourov, whose Astana team has struggled to score UCI points over the past two seasons.
“You see what that means. OK, it doesn’t mean we’re going to be top of the UCI rankings or anything, but the Tour is bigger than cycling, right?” Cavendish said. “You know how much I owe to this race, you know how much Vino owes to this race.”
Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) retains the yellow jersey after finishing safely through the peloton, although the Slovenian narrowly avoided a crash on a roundabout with just under 60km to go. Pogačar maintains a 45-second lead over Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) in the overall standings, while Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) remains third, 50 seconds behind.
The day, however, belonged to Cavendish, who played down his difficulties on the opening leg in Italy.
“I don’t like to suffer, but I know it’s all in the head,” he said, adding that his sprint had been an improvised effort in the middle of a very complicated final.
“We didn’t manage to do the teamwork we wanted, but the boys improvised and put me in the best position. When you’re not as good physically as the others, it’s really beneficial to use your head a bit.”
How it happened
After the intensity of Tuesday’s short stage to the Col du Galibier, the mood was much more relaxed at the end of the fifth stage from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. As with Monday’s long stage to Turin, which was also supposed to end with a bunch sprint from the start, the peloton was happy to call a temporary truce in the opening phase of the fifth stage.
At the signal, the peloton did not react immediately, contenting itself with a relatively sedate pace in the first kilometres. At one point, Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates) left the lead of the race with his compatriot Oier Lazkano (Movistar), apparently by accident, while the peloton moved slowly behind them.
A breakaway worthy of the name finally formed after around thirty kilometres of the stage, when Clément Russo (Groupama-FDJ) escaped, followed shortly afterwards by Mattéo Vercher (TotalEnergies).
The sprint teams were all happy with this scenario, and the pattern for the day was set. The French duo would extend their lead towards the five-minute mark after the race passed through Chambéry, by which time a coalition of sprint teams had already begun to slowly chip away at their advantage.
Russo led the Category 4 Côte du Cheval Blanc race and also led the intermediate sprint in Aosta, where Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) continued his campaign for the green jersey by beating Sam Bennett (Decathlon-AG2R), Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) and Philipsen to third place.
With just over 50km to go, the breakaway was down to a minute, and the pace and tension within the peloton was steadily increasing. Indeed, shortly before the sprint, Pogačar narrowly avoided a crash as the peloton crossed a median. Pello Bilbao (Bahrain Victorious) was among the crashers, but fortunately the Basque quickly rejoined the fray.
The general nervousness of the situation was further exacerbated by the rain which began to fall gently on the peloton in the final hour of the race, with the general classification teams massing towards the front before the Côte de Lhuis, where Russo and Vercher were caught.
King of the Mountains Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X Mobility) led the peloton to the summit. His team’s hopes of victory looked to be in jeopardy on the other side as Kristoff crashed with 27km to go, but the Norwegian held on to claim a fine third place on the day.
The combination of wet roads and repeated road furniture triggered another accident shortly afterwards, with Christophe Laporte (Visma-Lease a Bike) falling at low speed and, thankfully, without lasting consequences, as he was getting back in the chase before the high-speed contact.
Arnaud De Lie’s Lotto-Dstny team took control of the race in the final, taking the lead with 2km to go, but neither team could have dictated the conditions of such a sprint. Uno-X and DSM then took the reins in the final kilometre, but the expected masterful performance from Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) never came, with the world champion stuck against the right-hand barriers.
Cavendish had been following Philipsen’s back wheel until then, but he quickly realised he would have to take a different route to win here. It wasn’t the first time, but it made all the difference.
Results
Results provided by FirstCycling