Tour de France and competitive cycling generally
Posted: Sat Jul 08, 2023 6:18 pm
I didn't really want to start a thread on this because I don't have much to say really. I thought there was an old thread but I couldn't find it. I definitely remember a discussion about sprinters in the Tour de France and them winning random stages but not the whole thing. It involved Richard Brittain. Could that be why it doesn't exist? Dunno.
Anyway I read about Mark Cavendish crashing out of the Tour de France when he was trying to beat the record for the most stage wins and he's supposed to be retiring now so he'll remain joint with Eddy Merckx. But something struck me in that article:
I seem to remember at an Olympic games he was trying to win some road race but he failed and I think the commentators said it was something to do with there not being enough people on an Olympic team to provide the slipstreaming for the whole race, so they all ended up dropping out exhausted and leaving poor Mark Cavendish with too much work to do at the end. Just enter a sprint race.
Anyway I read about Mark Cavendish crashing out of the Tour de France when he was trying to beat the record for the most stage wins and he's supposed to be retiring now so he'll remain joint with Eddy Merckx. But something struck me in that article:
Is he though? Or is he just the best sprinter in an event that isn't really designed for sprinters? If he was the greatest sprinter, surely he would have been racking up Olympic gold medals in the velodrome, rather than just slipstreaming off a load of endurance athletes in an endurance event and then, surprise surprise, being able to outsprint them at the end. But only in the short flat stages that allow for it obviously, which is why he could never win the whole thing. It seems like he spent his entire career gaming the system.Widely regarded as cycling's greatest sprinter of all time, Cavendish...
I seem to remember at an Olympic games he was trying to win some road race but he failed and I think the commentators said it was something to do with there not being enough people on an Olympic team to provide the slipstreaming for the whole race, so they all ended up dropping out exhausted and leaving poor Mark Cavendish with too much work to do at the end. Just enter a sprint race.