"Winning one more got me out of bed in the morning'

Mark Cavendish tells Lawrence Ostlere about overtaking Eddy Merckx's stage wins record on his last Tour de France

For the past few months, every aspect of Mark Cavendish's life had been transfixed on the Tour de France. Specifically, stage five of the Tour de France. Specifically, the final 500m of stage five of the Tour de France. Every pedal stroke in training, every bite of food, every minuscule part of his equipment was calibrated to win one more stage.

“I think not just as a sports person, in anything you do you need a goal, a target, a reason to commit to work hard,” Cavendish says. He is speaking on Monday morning from his hotel on the French Riviera, his voice a little scratchy from the night before.

“Winning one more was always what got me out of bed in the morning, what got me on the bike, what made me do that extra half hour, what made me not eat that extra french fry the kids had left, you know what I mean?”

He can still picture the final moments of that 35th win: weaving through the pack, surfing wheels, jumping on to German rider Pascal Ackermann and using his slipstream like a catapult to launch into clear air. Suddenly he was in the lead, head down, hurtling to the line.

“Life’s taught me enough never to take anything for granted, whether that’s in a bike race or out of it, so you keep going as hard as you can and you hope you can hang on.”

He remembers the moment he knew he’d done it, the wash of relief that it was all over. “When the paint starts before the finish line – the big advertising painted on the road – you know. You know from experience: if no one’s next to you there, you’ve won.”