Mark Cavendish: Boy Racer

In his own typically outspoken style, Boy Racer chronicles Mark Cavendish’s own observations of his rise to the top of the cycling tree. In these extracts from the book, exclusive to Cyclingnews, Cavendish talks being a square peg in a round hole, drug testing, the Olympic Madison and why big-money offers won’t make him change teams.

All cyclists hate stationary bikes or ‘rigs’, mainly because they’re synonymous with leg-butchering, lung-perforating fitness tests, but no one hates them more than I do. At the [British Cycling Federation’s] Academy I’d almost literally kick and scream even before I was put through one of these ordeals, to the point where eventually the coaches decided it was too much melodrama to bear and agreed to let me opt out. All the feedback I’ve got from these tests could be condensed into a single message – the same one you often hear directed at opposing fans at football matches: ‘You’re shit and you know you are…’"

In our separate ways, Brad and I had both found ourselves in an unfamiliar position that day. I hadn’t known how to deal with being the strongest rider on the track – which is what I felt I was – and Bradley hadn’t known how to cope with not being the strongest rider. It came down to how we’d grown up as cyclists – me the underdog, the physiological mongrel if you like, who’d learned to scrap and scratch because it was the only way for me to survive. Brad, on the other hand, was a thoroughbred who, in my opinion, was so used to relying on his natural talent that he perhaps hadn’t learned how he could still win when that innate ability wasn’t functioning.

I kicked and kicked again, past 500, past 300, to the sign showing 200, then veered across the road, leaving Greipel a clear corridor to the line. I turned around. No, it couldn’t be, surely not: I’d dropped the bloody peloton. Trouble was, it was now too late to recover my momentum. I tried desperately to clamber on top of the pedals but, having slowed, the gear was far too big. The Italian Angelo Furlan whistled past me within a few metres of the line to leave me in second place, cursing my own bad luck and wondering what the hell had happened to the team’s so-called number-one sprinter.

Where was Greipel? My question was answered a minute or two later. I arrived at the bus, still breathless, took off my helmet and climbed off my bike. I looked around and saw Greipel arriving. He didn’t look pleased. In fact, he looked enraged.
‘Cavendish!’ he screamed, seemingly oblivious to the small crowd of spectators, riders and managers within earshot. ‘You only sprint for yourself! You’re selfish!’
‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘I was leading you out!’
‘No, no, you only sprint for yourself. You selfish bastard!’
‘I fucking led you out. Where the fuck were you?’
I dare say we’d still be swapping expletives now if our directeur sportif Allan Peiper hadn’t been there to restore order.

Why didn’t I go elsewhere and double my money? Simple – for the same reasons that I’ll now honour my contract with Bob Stapleton, rather than join Team Sky, the much-trumpeted, eagerly anticipated British-based pro team that will debut in the pro ranks in 2010. When the man behind that project, the British Cycling Performance director Dave Brailsford, unveiled the first, concrete details of his plan in February 2009, the press at home and abroad were quick to assume that I’d be the fulcrum and figurehead of the team. The Sun newspaper even dedicated almost a full page to a picture of me winning Stage 5 of the Tour, alongside an article speculating that I could be bought out of a contract worth ‘about £1.2m’ a year with Columbia. They were wrong on two counts – once, spectacularly, on the value of my current deal, then again on the likelihood of me wriggling out of that deal before its expiry date.

So what are those reasons? Well, one is that, while Sky look set to be one of the richest if not the richest team in the peloton– and logic certainly dictates that they’d be willing to fork out more for Britain’s most high-profile Tour rider than any Spanish, Italian or, for that matter, American-based outfit – the wealth that motivates me is not the kind that appears on my bank statement. If they could guarantee me wins in Tour stages or Classics like Paris–Roubaix and Milan–San Remo, that would be another matter, but that’s the other issue: I solemnly swear that I couldn’t guarantee the results I’ve had this year with different teammates.