Mark Cavendish’s quest to interrupt the all-time file for Tour de France stage wins bought off to a horrible begin on stage 1, with the Astana rider being dropped on the primary climb of the day, struggling within the Italian warmth and vomiting whereas driving effectively behind the peloton.
Cavendish wasn’t meant to be a contender for the opening two levels of the Tour de France, with punchy Italian roads not suiting his spriting traits, nevertheless, he wouldn’t have anticipated to drop out of the peloton with greater than 160 kilometres nonetheless to go earlier than the end in Rimini.
With the day’s break gone and much from an infernal tempo being set on the 12.5km Col de Valico Tre Faggi, Cavendish was noticed being doused in water. Temperatures initially had been upwards of 37°C and ice vests and further water bottles had been commonplace amongst all groups.
Cavendish confirmed no indicators of restoration as he dropped additional again and was then seen vomiting a number of occasions as quite a few his Astana Qazaqstan teammates went again to attempt to assist him survive the primary stage.
His group didn’t touch upon what was affecting Cavendish on the opener when requested by Eurosport’s Jens Voigt what was fallacious with him but it surely seemed to be an upset abdomen quite than heatstroke, with Sporza reporting that he gave up his gels and bars after not with the ability to preserve something down.
The hole to Cavendish and what was as a result of be his dash prepare, Cees Bol, Davide Ballerini, Michael Mørkøv and Michele Gazzoli, to the again of the peloton, went previous the 10-minute mark with nonetheless over 100km to trip within the stage.
The excellent news for Cavendish was that his group of 5 grew in dimension when teammates Fabio Jakobsen and Bram Welten (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) and Jonas Rickaert (Alpecin-Deceuninck) joined them, including manpower to their chase for residence.
Cavendish, 39, is driving his fifteenth Tour de France in 2024 and is looking for a historic thirty fifth stage win which might put him above Eddy Merckx within the all-time leaderboard for stage victories.
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