Sunday, April 28, 2024

Mark Cavendish at the Tour de France 2012 – He’s THAT good!

-

HomeJournalsGarmin Physio Toby WatsonMark Cavendish at the Tour de France 2012 - He's THAT good!

Mark Cavendish at the Tour de France 2012; one sprint stage, one stage win. The world champ was sensational in the finale of last night’s stage. He squeezed by “The Gorilla” Andre Greipel who ran off the back of a beautifully organised leadout train.

Mark Cavendish
That takes Mark to 21 stages of the Tour!

Over the years, the dominance of Mark Cavendish has been off the back of the best leadout train in the Tour, however back in 2010 he showed he could win solo after Renshaw was ejected from the race for headbutting and not holding his line (classy).

Tonight he showed that he can win when someone else is running a great leadout train.

One of Mark Cavendish‘s great advantages is how aerodynamic he is while sprinting (elbows in, chin virtually on his bars) so he needs to push a lot fewer watts to get to warp speed when compared to his rivals.

It will be interesting to see how he goes head to head against Greipel in later stages where perhaps he’s not pushing into a headwind

Smart money has to be that he will again find away to win.

He is a freak.

Toby Watson
Toby Watsonhttps://www.veloveritas.co.uk
Ex-Garmin Transitions physiotherapist and soigneur Toby Watson brings you inside the squad, and shows you what it's like to be working with a top team on the biggest races in the world. Through his regular blog updates, Toby shares his sense of drama and fun that were essential parts of his job. Toby is Australian, and currently lives in Girona with his fiancee Amanda. If he has any time, he enjoys reading and running, and occasionally skiing too, when he can.

Related Articles

Toby Watson – Today is the Big Day

Today is the big day. The culmination of the road cycling programme for the London Olympics. I can’t believe we’re already here!

A Matter of Scale (Preview: TDF 2012 St 9)

A Matter of Scale. The first (of two) Individual Time Trials in the race, the riders are looking at 41km on a relatively hilly parcours where the stronger time triallists in the field will attempt to put some more space between themselves and their “mountain goat” rivals.

Book out the window: TdF 2010 Stage 6 (bunchie)

Book out the window. There was a quote one of our boys gave on a day he crashed twice in 200m: “I thought I was pretty good at riding my bike.” Upon watching the final sprints and the way our boys have set up the lead-out train in the past two days, I think I could be forgiven for thinking something similar about what I do for a job.

How far to go? Stage 16 TdF2010 (mountain)

How far to go. Stage 16 TdF2010 was the biggest climbing stage of the Tour, but the last climb was some 60km from the finish, which made for a weird looking profile for the day. The boys scaled four enormous mountains, the first beginning from km 0. Tough gig.

At Random

Joe Dombrowski – Proving to be Well Rounded

'Stars of the future ?' Here's one - please just remember where you read it first. After the toughest stage of the Tour of California - traversing brutal Mount Baldy, many were asking 'who's Joe Dombrowski ?'

Lucho Herrera’s Pinarello

To appreciate how big a deal it was for Luis Alberto (Lucho) Herrera to win the 1987 Vuelta, it's best to read the passage in Lucy Fallon and Adrian Bell's book, 'Viva la Vuelta' where they talk about the closing stage into Madrid.

Le Tour de France 2009 – Stage 17: Bourg-Saint-Maurice > Le Grand-Bornand, 169.5km

It had to be an early start, today for Le Grand-Bornand. To get down to the Bourg-Saint-Maurice start, we had to drive against a section of race route and decided to get away early to beat the closures.

Heinrich Haussler – “everything is good with me at the moment”

He’s back; IAM’s Heinrich Haussler was ‘quiet’ last year but in January he grabbed the first major result of 2015; the Australian Elite Road Race Championship. IAM stepped up to Pro Tour status for 2015 and this season could hardly have started on a higher note for HH, with a win in the Australian Elite Road Race Championship – never an easy race to win given the number of Aussies in the Pro Tour and the high standard of their domestic racing. He followed his win up with a whole host of top ten stage placings in the Tour Down Under and in the Tour of Qatar.