Would the Tour de France 2021 be definitely a wonderful children’s tale, where reality often goes beyond fiction? Once upon a time there was a 36-year-old British sprinter from the Isle of Man who lost his legs. It took him three years to look for them and it was in Flanders, dazed, that he finally found them at the beginning of the year.
Proof: after being brought to the final three times in an upholstered chair by his Deceuninck-Quick Step teammates, Mark Cavendish, with a total of thirty-three stage victories in thirteen participations on the Tour, is on the point of equaling the record held by the greatest racing cyclist: the Belgian Eddy Merckx. The thirteenth stage, Friday July 9, between Nîmes and Carcassonne, could also give him the opportunity.
Powerless to regain his level which had hoisted him to the highest of the years 2008 to 2016 – time when the “Cav” crushed the competition – the former ” fatty “, as he qualified in his biography (At Speed, My Life In the Fast Lane, VeloPress, 2013), had, at the end of this winter, returned to victory in the Tour of Turkey (four stages removed), under the colors of the Flemish team after having almost begged to take him back into its workforce .
It was under these same colors – the team was in turn named Omega Pharma-Quick Step then Etixx-Quick Step – that he had competed for the 2013 to 2015 seasons. Then he had released these same Belgians, for whom all attempt to raise wages is worth treachery, favoring a generous contract under the colors of the South African team Dimension Data, then that of the kingdom of Bahrain – so well on this edition of the Tour – and in which, however, victory eluded him again.
A long crossing of the desert
It all sounds like the parable of the return of the prodigal son. Without a team at the end of the 2020 season, Cavendish is thus forced to ask the boss of Deceuninck Quick-Step, Patrick Lefevere, for a kind of favor. The latter, at 66, has a talent for incubating champions that he warms up to a constant temperature. And above all never seems surprised by its own power to resuscitate runners, certainly thanks to the simple laying on of hands.
In truth, the forfeit of the sprinter of the Belgian training Sam Bennett, green jersey in 2020, must have been taken for Cavendish as a sign of fate, a week before the big departure from Brest, on June 26. Opening the door of rediscovered glory.
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