- Mark Cavendish wins 34th Tour de France stage of career
- British sprinter matches Eddy Merckx's stage win record
- Briton describes victory as ' just another win on the Tour'
- The secrets behind Deceuninck-Quick Step's success
- Day-by-day guide: Times, profiles and TV details
It was not the prettiest victory of his career, a chaotic field sprint in which he was almost beaten by his own team-mate Michael Mørkøv. But it hardly mattered. Thirteen years to the day after he won his first Tour de France stage in Châteauroux on July 9 2008, Mark Cavendish claimed his 34th in Carcassonne on Friday, to draw level, finally, with the great Belgian Eddy Merckx in the all-time winners’ list. An itch that has been niggling him for at least a decade, ever since he started racking up multiple stages per year and it became a statistical possibility and the media cottoned on to it, has finally been scratched.
It is an extraordinary achievement, although not for the reasons many believe it to be. As Cavendish was quick to point out afterwards, as he has always been quick to point out whenever this subject has been brought up, there is, and will never be, any comparison with Merckx.
The greatest all-round cyclist the sport has ever known won well over 500 races in his career, including 11 grand tours. Merckx won sprint stages, mountain stages, time trials, one-day races, the Hour Record. Not for nothing was he known as The Cannibal (although the Belgian was also involved in three doping scandals). Cavendish, by contrast, is very much a specialist. The greatest sprinter the sport has ever known. We can now say that without hesitation.
No, the reason this record matters is because of what it says about Cavendish the man; about his drive and determination to come back after nearly falling into the abyss a couple of years ago. And about the Tour and its power to transcend cycling and to attract new followers.
Cavendish has always been one of the most intelligent and insightful sportsmen in the country, and he gave a particularly brilliant press conference in the immediate aftermath of Friday’s win in which he expanded on some of these themes. He conceded that the record was largely irrelevant, like comparing apples and oranges. But he added that if it helped inspire the next generation of boys and girls into cycling, then it would be worth something.
“I don’t think I can ever be compared to Eddy Merckx, the greatest male road cyclist of all time,” Cavendish said, graciously, in contrast to Merckx who had been rather mealy-mouthed when asked earlier for his thoughts on the Manxman potentially drawing level with him. “But I think to equal the number of stage victories... I think for someone who doesn’t follow cycling a lot it’s something they can put into perspective.
“If it can inspire them to get on a bike, that’s the biggest thing I can take from it I guess.”
Cavendish really has been note-perfect in this race, on and off the bike. Right down to the fact that he took time to congratulate Marianne Vos, who won her 30th stage of the women’s Giro d’Italia on Thursday, before the stage start in Nimes, labelling the Dutchwoman an inspiration.
After another long hot day in the saddle - 220km in which his QuickStep team had to battle throughout to control proceedings, their job made harder when they lost Tim 'The Tractor' Declerq to a mass pileup with 65km remaining which also accounted for Britain's Tokyo-bound Simon Yates - Cavendish had the clarity of mind to state that Merckx was the best 'male' cyclist of all time, adding that he hoped to inspire both boys and girls to ride the Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes in he future.
He has been winning more friends in the twilight of his career than he ever had in his pomp.
Actually, he was fascinating on that subject, too, and about his sometimes prickly relationship with the media. “I’m not going to lie, sometimes I think I've been personally picked on,” he said when asked about it. “But on the same level I think I've also been a prick you know? But that’s what happens when you're young. I think for many years I suffered the consequence of being brash and young without an education compared to the media I guess.
“As you get older, you get a family, responsibilities, you learn to behave. Unfortunately some people didn’t want to let go of what I was like when I was young, even though I had changed. And it maybe took [some] time away for me to get that chip off my shoulder and for the press to get that chip off their shoulder. And as you can see I'm a grown up now I'm 36, I'm not that 20 year old who wanted to fight the world you know?”
There is no doubt he is being celebrated now - and rightly so. His comeback at this race actually deserves far more praise than it is getting. It is Cavendish’s misfortune that he is doing this at the same time as England are potentially making history at Euro 2020. He could probably win Sunday’s mountain stage in Andorra to go one clear of Merckx and it would still only be a footnote on Monday morning.
Again, though, he struck just the right note when asked about that. “I’m proud to say I've got some friends who are playing for the country,” said the 36 year-old, who shares an agent with Jordan Henderson, when asked whether he would be supporting England on Sunday. “It’s been great to see England doing so well. My room-mate [Mattia Cattaneo] is Italian, though, so I think Sunday night is going to be a bit tense. It will be a nice day, finishing this block of racing before the rest day [on Monday], we can kind of enjoy it and for sure the whole country is behind the football you know.”
There are some big days to come in the Pyrenees but Cavendish is flying. He may have collapsed to the floor in a messy heap in Carcassonne on Friday, clearly spent both physically ad emotionally, but it would be a major surprise now if he did not battle through these next few days in an attempt to contest another sprint in Libourne next Friday. And then the moment it feels as if it's all building towards: a potentially historic return to the Champs-Elysees a week on Sunday.