Mark Cavendish on life in the saddle: 'I just love to win'
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Version 0 of 1. Mark Cavendish has reasons to be cheerful. He has won the first two stages of the 51st Tour of Turkey, looking on course to repeat last year’s feat of four stage wins and the points jersey. He’s happy with how things are going. “Tom [Boonen] is coming back from injury, I am starting to build up my form for the Tour [de France] and we are getting our lead-out right. So things are pretty good.” Crucial to that lead-out train is Mark Renshaw, though when he is asked whether their relationship has altered over time he replies simply that it’s “the same”. There’s no special formula. “We’re mates,” he says simply. But on the bike the chemistry between the sprinter and his faithful poisson pilote clearly works and reaps massive rewards – Cavendish racked up his ninth win of the season at the Tour of Turkey. The life of a high-speed, high-risk sprinter has clearly left the hunger undimmed. “I just love it. That’s it. I just love to win.” Related: The most depressing part of the CIRC cycling report is also the most ignored But today is different. Today is another stage, another round of interviews and the Manxman looks weary. He has lost the lead in the points competition to Lampre-Merida’s Sacha Modolo. And today is not a day for the sprinters. And, sure enough, the Etixx team lead home the grupetto on the final climb of the day to the House of the Virgin Mary. Turkey wears its antiquity lightly but what other race can boast a climb that starts at Ephesus, the commercial centre of the ancient Mediterranean world and finishes at a site of global pilgrimage? Like all cyclists, Cavendish is much smaller at close range than the colossally powerful beast he appears on a bike. In shorts and T-shirt he could be any lad on his summer holidays in Turkey. But he’s here to race and to face the press and he does so with good grace. Cavendish has grown up – he is, he says, like most guys of his age (he’s 29) not the same person he was at 21. “It is easy to remember that I was young. I was winning when I was young. Everybody just grows up. You just learn responsibilities more,” he says. It’s a combination of factors that have helped him to mature. “I think it is a mixture of everything. I think most guys my age are going to be different to how they were at 21, 22 years old, for many reasons.” Chief among them is clearly family, and when he speaks of them there is a kind of wistfulness. How does he unwind from the pressures of being one of the fastest men in the world? “I spend time with my family. It makes you forget about your job. It takes you away to just them.” You sense that much of the Cavendish we think we know is a front for a shy, gentle man, softened by parenthood. Cavendish has grown up in the spotlight – he reminds his burgeoning audience of reporters and fans that he was winning young and has been winning for a long time. So is there a special memory from his years at the very top of the sport? He will only say: “I am incredibly lucky to be part of many successful teams and many successes. I have had some great memories of my career.” Then he laughs and adds: “It is kind of like a question like I am approaching the end of my career – no, I haven’t really looked back on what I have done. I have the rest of my life after I finished to do that.” Boonen is also here – long, lean and deeply tanned, coming back from a shoulder injury sustained in a nasty crash at Paris-Nice. It’s a study in contrasts – in physical size and in attitude. With Cavendish you sense the sprinter’s explosiveness beneath the surface, that he may not suffer fools – or foolish questions – lightly. When asked about his prospects for the green jersey at the Tour de France you can almost see him counting to 10 before replying to a question he says he is asked every week. His strategy will be to win stages, because that’s how you win the jersey, he finally replies. There’s no doubting that Etixx have had a remarkable start to 2015. “Yeah, we have had an incredibly successful start to the season. Etixx-Quick-Step is, I think, the team that has won the most races and if you look at our top three finishers, it is way beyond what any other team has done,” Cavendish points out. So is he looking forward to facing off against Marcel Kittel, the new fast kid in the block, who has been out of action with a virus? The sprinter’s aggression shines through for a second as he turns the question back on his interrogators: “I know if I was in the same position as he was, if I hadn’t raced for five months, you guys would all be saying it is the end of my career.” It’s a question of attitude – Cavendish says he has always raced “even when I am sick or coming back, I always race. I am a professional bike rider, I am paid money by my team and I have to represent my team.” In contrast, Kittel had to abandon the Tour de Yorkshire after 100km of the first stage, climbing off after being struck by illness again. Compared to Cavendish, Boonen – still the great superstar of Belgian cycling – is a study in relaxation. At 34 he is five years the Briton’s senior and a seasoned performer. Where his team-mate is hunched forward, speaking quietly into the forest of microphones and cameras and phones that mushroom in front of him, the Belgian is relaxed and expansive, sitting tall, answering in his clear and fluent English. Boonen is comfortable in his bronzed skin – he no longer feels the rage to win, a feeling he says that would leave him “unable to talk for two hours” after a loss. “That goes away,” he smiles, “the more races you lose the better you get at losing.” He has evolved as an athlete, he says, considering himself more of an endurance rider who enjoys his training now, who reacts well on long and hard rides, and is more focused: “Every hour you do has to count, you do more with less training.” The real change at Etixx has been, he says, “to train more like we used to do – riding with only schedules and figures all the time it’s really boring”. He admits, however, that it was hard to watch his beloved Spring Classics – if a genie were to grant him three wishes he says he would like one more perfect tilt at the cobbles, “to be able to do it one more time as I wish to” – but he made peace with the situation. So would he like to be ‘Mr Paris-Roubaix’? “Oh, I think Tom Boonen is enough,” he smiles. Tom Boonen. Mark Cavendish. Both have had careers that would be more than enough for many other riders. But when the grupetto crosses the line six hours later, a young Turkish woman at the finish line gazes adoringly at the Briton and says simply “Mark Cavendish … charisma.” • Follow Suze Clemitson on Twitter• Follow Guardian Sport on Facebook |