Contract renewed for another season and the certainty that he will not run the Tour de France. So Mark Cavendish is about to experience what will probably be his last season as a professional, with the nasty surprise of the robbery in the Essex house that netted the robbers a pair of incredibly valuable watches and sowed a seed of fear in the British family. Allowing justice to take its course and time to heal the wounds, we found ourselves with Alessandro Petacchi to discuss the contract renewal signed by Mark with Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl: this is the new name of Lefevere's team.
We reasoned with the man from La Spezia when Cavendish signed for Deceuninck-Quick Step and we saw him go from initial perplexity to certainty that, going to the Tour due to the unavailability of Sam Bennett, Mark would have done great things.
«We all knew more or less – says the man from La Spezia – that for Lefevere the future is JacobsenI don't know how much it costs him, but it's certainly in his best interest to make it grow. If he hadn't had that bad injury, he would have already become the strongest sprinter in the world.He lost time, came back to the Vuelta and won. He'll go from strength to strength and get back to 100 percent."
And Cavendish?
He was returning from dark years. He went to the 2021 Tour because there were those problems with Bennett, otherwise he shouldn't have done it.His teammates had the great merit of standing by him and perhaps there were no irresistible opponents, but it's always Cavendish and must be respectedHe has shown that he has found a very high level and he knows that if he stays there, he will continue to go strong, while The list of those who left there and never won again is very longI believe that for this reason, Mark accepted the compromise.
Do you think Mark could become Jakobsen's wingman like you did for him?
He doesn't have the nature to shoot. You can't bring Mark Cavendish to the Tour to shootHe doesn't have the mentality or even the characteristics to do it. For that role there is Morkov, if anything I would try to strengthen the trainThe Tour team is almost complete, with Jakobsen and Morkov, Alaphilippe and Asgreen, and then some other people who will have to work.
Will we see him again at the Giro?
It's a possibility. His motivation for the Tour could be beat Merckx's record, but I think it was already a lot to equal him, considering where he ended upI saw him aggressive in Türkiye, he was super motivated and he was ready. Maybe he'll be ready next summer too, you never know.
Leaving out someone who has won 34 stages at the Tour, including four in 2021, to focus on a young rider who has never done the Tour…
Lefevere is very good at these things, he doesn't use his heart but his head. And maybe breaking Merckx's record might not add anything to the team. But leaving him at home to bring Jakobsen could be seen as a risk and we can be sure that the Mark of the Tour is another personI remember him from 2014. I had seen him ten days earlier and when I found him again at the start in Leeds, I wondered if it was the same rider. He fell and went home after the first stage, but The Cavendish of the Tour is really something elseHe wouldn't have won four stages last time if that hadn't been the case…
