Mark Cavendish – “One last chance...”

“It’s beautiful. We were just determined. Today was a really, really hard day and we’ve seen five or six guys from my team just empty their tank and I’m sure they’re going to suffer for it tomorrow and for them to put themselves in the box before the Ventoux, to enable me to win, shows how special they are. How they worked today was brilliant; over the climb and into the finish was just perfect.
“I spoke to Brian [Holm] last night and we discussed how the last rise was a second-category one; I’m usually okay with those. If I didn’t think I could get over it, I would have cut my effort and come in with the grupetto. In the first week I definitely wouldn’t have had a problem – it would have been a full-on sprint – but in the third week, with tired legs, I was sure they were doing to try and make it hard for us. I said to the guys, ‘We need to give it one last chance…’ and I asked them to stay with me. It doesn’t necessarily give me shelter but when you’ve got guys around you, it’s so good for morale. You know you’ve got someone there to push you on. If you feel like giving up because it’s too hard on the climb… when there are guys with you, it’ll let them down. If they’re there, it gives me an extra urge to dig deeper. It’s not an easy task to stay up there in the top 10 with Menchov riding on the front on the climb but with the guys with me, I was able to do it.
“It was just a case of suffering over the top. I even tried to go on the descent… Sanchez went and I tried to go after him but no one was going to let me do that.
“In the last kilometer Tony [Martin] gave it every last drop. He was dying and I had to go early – with 260 or 270 meters to go – which normally, on a flat sprint, is fine but on an uphill it’s a long way. I had to finish it off to pay them back.”