Читать книгу Etape. The untold stories of the Tour de France’s defining stages онлайн

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Cavendish was a bundle of contradictions. Hot-headed yet analytical. Supremely self-confident and yet, at times, cripplingly self-conscious. Highly sensitive – he would burst into tears and declare his love for his team-mates – and at times coarse and aggressive. Just ask those British fans in Annecy. Blessed with intelligence, but sometimes unable – to his own frustration – to express himself as he would like.

He worried about his Scouse-sounding Isle of Man accent; about how people would judge him. ‘Although I talk like an idiot, I’m not really a fool, like,’ he tells me. Then there was the question of his athletic ability: were his gifts of the body or mind? As a teenager, Cavendish famously ‘failed’ the lab test designed by the British Cycling Academy to weed out those who didn’t have the physiology to make it as a professional; he was given a reprieve, and went on to become not just a decent rider, but one of the greatest. Whatever his physical gifts, one thing was certain: his desire. Cavendish didn’t seem to want success; he needed it. And he had decided, long ago, that he would have it.