Most days within the Tour de France, the main focus of the media is on the entrance of the race. That wasn’t the case on Saturday when Mark Cavendish, who’s hoping to interrupt the all-time document for Tour de France stage wins this 12 months, went out the again of the peloton on the primary climb, greater than 160 kilometres from the end.
Cavendish could possibly be seen vomiting whereas using by his sufferfest, however was surrounded by teammates as he fought to make it to Rimini contained in the time restrict. He lastly got here by properly inside the 48-minute time lower.
He wasn’t sick or having warmth exhaustion, he was simply affected by the parcours, in keeping with his group supervisor Alexandre Vinokourov.
“The stage was simply very troublesome for us. It was a troublesome day for everybody,” Vinokourov stated of the 206-kilometre stage run by the baking warmth of Tuscany with seven important climbs.
The Manxman himself was blunt in his evaluation of the stage when requested by Eurosport what was occurring.
“If you’ve got bought my physique sort now, do not begin biking, as a result of them days are gone,” Cavendish stated. “But we all know what we’re doing – it doesn’t suggest it is simple. We’re not using round speaking. It was so laborious – that was so laborious, however we had a plan and we caught to it. I’d have appreciated to remain yet another climb with the peloton, however I used to be seeing stars it was so laborious.”
Cavendish wasn’t alone out the again of the stage, he was joined by his total group, minus Harold Tejada and Alexey Lutsenko, together with Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Jonas Rickaert, Fabio Jakobsen and Bram Welten (DSM-Firmenich-PostNl). They got here to the end 39:12 behind stage winner Romain Bardet, properly inside the time restrict of greater than 48 minutes.
“We do not go straightforward to try this. You can work out what the entrance guys are going to do and you then work out what you have to do to make the time restrict.”
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