Mark Cavendish

is my bike hero #3.

I have never seen anything like the way in which he finished up the Champs Elysees to win the final stage of the Tour de France in 2010.

I was lucky enough to be in France when I saw this finish on TF1, the French equivalent of BBC1.

Now back in his homeland you could only see this amazing finish to the world’s biggest bike race if you had satellite television.  In France he would be treated like a God, a true hero, as cycling is in the French psyche and is part of the national culture. Whereas he could walk into any public place in the UK and be pretty sure that nobody would recognise him. Even if he wore a t-shirt printed with the phrase “I am Mark Cavendish” he is hardly going to get mobbed.

In cycling terms this man is a one off, so much so that he dictates the way the event organisers plan the route and finishes of stages in the Tour de France. The Tour de France is the World’s greatest cycling competition has been forced to consider how to set out the course that the race takes, as if the race stage is a flat one with a straight finish, there is only going to be one winner.

You only have to watch the final 200m of this race and you can see that this man is head and shoulders above his peers, who themselves are at the pinnacle of their sport.

Further Reading