Mark Cavendish became the most prolific stage winner in the history of the Tour de France, taking his 35th victory with a typically instinctive victory in a chaotic sprint finish in Saint-Vulbas.
It may not have been the Champs-Élysées, but when the moment came on the Avenue des Bergeries, in a suburban town in south-eastern France better known for its boulodromes than for its sprint finishes, the 39-year-old from the Isle of Man kept his date with destiny.
Cavendish said: “I’m in a little bit of disbelief. Astana put a big gamble on this year to make sure we’re good here at the Tour, my boss has done it.
“It’s a big gamble to come here to try to win at least one stage, a big gamble for my boss Alexander Vinokourov, a big thing to do, it shows he’s an ex-bike rider, somebody who knows what the Tour de France is. You have to go all-in and we’ve done it and worked it exactly how we wanted to do, how we built the team, the equipment, every little detail has been put towards today.”
Cavendish, who struggled through the Tour’s opening stage when he was seen being ill on the bike, somehow recovered to take an exuberant victory, a year after he had quit his planned final Tour after breaking his collarbone.
Cavendish comebacks have become legendary, but this was perhaps the greatest triumph over adversity of all, given how hard he had to battle to get through Saturday’s opening stage, from Florence to Rimini.
Once again, as the Tour exited the mountains and headed towards the flatter roads of the Rhone valley, expectations built around his bid to overhaul Eddy Merckx’s 34 stage wins. He was caught out by the crash on stage three into Turin but this time the stars aligned for Cavendish, with both the peloton and the weather playing ball.
With 24km to go and the roads drying out after an earlier downpour, Cavendish and his Astana team stubbornly hugged the right-hand side of the road and maintained the steady pace that had characterised most of an uneventful stage.