Three reasons why Mark Cavendish is inhuman

Jul 2, 2012

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1. The ability to maintain a high speed

Not the speed of the sprint, the speed of the run-in. The peloton was doing 45mph over the last few miles of Stage 2 of this year’s Tour and riders were disappearing out the back because they couldn’t maintain that flat speed even when drafting someone else.

This was after 200km of cycling. It was just inhuman. Yet Cavendish stayed in there, jostling for position. Cycling at 45mph for all that time didn’t mean winning the stage. It was just the entry requirement for competing the sprint, which leads us to…

2. The ability to speed up

If you’re doing 45mph, how in the name of all that is good and pure do you ACCELERATE?

I’ve done 45mph on a bike. I was going downhill. I shit myself it was so fast.

3. Timing

Cavendish won today’s stage by about eight inches. Travelling at Lord knows what speed with his lungs swelling so much his other organs were being forced into his arse, Cavendish looked up, gauged the distance to the finish, weighed up his own condition and top speed versus Andre Greipel’s and picked his moment to within a fraction of a second.

Unreal. Inhuman.

Mark Cavendish Sprinters

Comments

2 responses to “Three reasons why Mark Cavendish is inhuman”

Andrew

July 3, 2012

They are all inhuman freaks, but the real mutants will come to the fore after the first rest day when they enter the mountains and you see who has used up all their petrol on the early stages. Until then I’m using the rolling flat countryside as a cure for insomnia. Doesn’t always work when theres a stupidly close dash for the line like last night.

Reply
1. Alex
  
  July 3, 2012
  
  Not sure there’s a time zone where a sprint finish could serve as an alarm call. Alaska maybe?
  
  Reply