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

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Then he leans forward again and the furrow vanishes: ‘Nah. That wasn’t the best one. I would say Aubenas.

‘Yeah, Aubenas.’

* * *

‘I wouldn’t even have gone for it, if Bjarne hadn’t come over and said that,’ Cavendish says.

Even after his conversation with Riis, he didn’t feel confident when he went back to the road book and studied the profile for stage nineteen. Yet he also concluded that he might never have such a good chance of winning such a tough stage. He was in the midst of his greatest season. He won thirteen times before the Tour even started, including his first ‘Monument’, the Milan–San Remo classic, in late March. That, too, had included two tough climbs towards the end, the Cipressa and Poggio. Then he had won three stages of the Tour of Italy. When it came to the Tour, he won stages two, three, ten and eleven.

Stage three to La Grande-Motte had, in some ways, been the most impressive. It was a different kind of Cavendish win. In the Camargue, where the huge plains south of Arles stretch to the Mediterranean, his team had a plan. This desert-flat but marshy expanse, where white horses gallop through the long reeds, is notorious for the strong wind that blows off the sea. When it comes from the side, as it usually does, it wreaks havoc, causing the peloton to split into echelons – especially if a team is driving at the front.