Each Tour de France produces many striking vignettes, and Thursday’s from the finish at the bleak mountain top ski resort of Luz Ardiden in the Pyrenees was one of the best. At funeral pace, the diminutive Manx cyclist Mark Cavendish crossed the finish line dead last, 32 minutes behind the stage winner Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia, who will win the overall title when the race finishes in Paris today.
He finished last, but there were echoes of a victory parade: alongside Cavendish lined across the road were four of his teammates at the Belgian Deceuninck-Quickstep team, who had helped him survive this week’s four mountain stages of the Tour. That left Cavendish in a position to try for the 35th Tour de France stage win of his career on Friday and Sunday’s flat stages, an attempt to push beyond the record of 34 which he held jointly with cycling’s Greatest of All Time, Eddy Merckx.
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