Special envoy to Châteauroux
To discover
The general classification of the Tour de France
Three stages in Châteauroux, three stage victories: Mark Cavendish offered the hat trick on Thursday in the prefecture of Indre, where he had already won the last two times that the Tour de France was there present.
In 2008, the Isle of Man cannonball opened his peerless record for a sprinter by gleaning the first of his 32 stage victories on the Grande Boucle. Three years later, in 2011, undoubtedly for his best season - he won this green jersey that he still wears today, before being crowned world champion -, the Mannois had again raised his arms on the long avenue de la Châtre.
Here is the racing car of the Deceuninck-Quick Step team, still perfectly driven by his teammate Michael Morkov, two lengths behind the record for success in the Great Loop of Eddy Merckx and able to greedily match the Belgian Cannibal from here to arrival in Paris.
After five lean years, Mark Cavendish, already winner of the 4th stage at Fougères, doubled the lead ahead of the Belgian Jasper Philipsen and the French Nacer Bouhanni.
The Dutchman Mathieu Van Der Poel kept the yellow leader's jersey at the end of this 6th stage starting from Tours (160.6 km) with eight seconds ahead of Julian Alaphilippe.
Despite the miraculous side of his resurrection, when he found himself without a contract at the end of last season after several years of dragging Epstein-Barr syndrome, then depression, the Briton refuses to give in to the nostalgia or excesses of emotion.
It may not be too romantic, but I had to consider this arrival as a sprint like any other
Mark Cavendish
“It might not be too romantic, but I had to consider this finish as a sprint like any other. Of course, when I saw that Châteauroux was on the course, it made me want to be here even more, ”
added the one who, at 36, was not guaranteed to participate in this Tour de France. due to his competition with Irishman Sam Bennett, eventually ruled out due to a knee injury.
“I will never forget my first victory at Châteauroux because a victory in the Tour de France is the strongest thing that can happen in a career, but it is also because I had seen Mario Cipollini win here in 1998 and that Châteauroux is part, with Bordeaux and Paris, of the big cities of the Tour de France for a sprinter. ”
Frustrated at not being able to compete
with Australian Caleb Ewan
Mark Cavendish, however, measures the time elapsed by the evolution of speeds and gears over the thirteen years since his first victory: “
The level of the sprint is extraordinary today.
In 2008, we used 52x11, today everyone is at 54 or 55. The trains are much better organized, there is a new generation that goes extremely fast, ”
he said, frustrated at not being able to take on the Australian Caleb Ewan, who left the Tour with a heavy crash during his victory at Fougères.
This short stage was marked by the beautiful escape of Belgian Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet, partly led in the company of German rider Roger Kluge and tamed as the final explanation approached.
On the contrary, Friday's stage between Vierzon and Le Creusot will be the longest for twenty years, with more than 249 km, and should smile on the daring with several difficulties including the formidable Signal d'Uchon, a pile of granite boulders which should give ideas for backpackers, puncheurs, but also for those who, before the Alps, hope to make up some of the delay accumulated in the Breton falls or the lenticular laps of the Laval time trial.