Cavendish recovering from bronchitis at Tour de France

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Mark Cavendish has so far not been a factor in this Tour de France, and that is partially due to the fact that he is recovering from bronchitis. The Omega Pharma-QuickStep rider said that he just finished a round of antibiotics on Sunday.

“Yesterday I felt a little better than on Sunday,” he told tuttobiciweb.it. “Unfortunately, last week I had to take antibiotics because of bronchitis and I just finished them on Sunday. I'm better now, although I'm still not 100 percent."

From here, he said he will take it one day at a time. Tuesday's team time trial is “a difficult test in which I hope to help the team. And then tomorrow we'll start to think ... further."

Cavendish, the newly-crowned British national road champion, was caught up by the mass crash on the first stage and finished only 58th on a stage which he had hoped to win and claim the race's first yellow jersey. He finished in the gruppetto in the last two stages and is now nearly 27 minutes down on race leader Jan Bakelants.