Ageless Cavendish storms to sprint victory at Giro d’Italia
The win continues a remarkable comeback for Cavendish, who won four stages of last year’s Tour de France
Cycling legend Mark Cavendish continued his late-career renaissance by winning a Giro d’Italia stage for the first time in nine years.
The 36-year-old sprint specialist pulled away to take the third stage in Balatonfured, Hungary, by a wheel ahead of the second-placed Frenchman, Arnaud Démare.
The win continues a remarkable comeback for Cavendish, who won four stages of last year’s Tour de France, having not won a stage at any grand tour — the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France or Vuelta a España — since 2016.
“I’m very happy, it’s never easy to win the first sprint of a grand tour because it’s very chaotic,” he said.
“I’m not very young anymore, I’m usually in gear after four to five days, but at the end of the day I’m still the old Cavendish.
“The team was fantastic and a big thank you goes to [team-mate] Davide Ballerini, who did a great job going back and forth, fighting and guiding me as best he could.”
The stage, which began in southwest Hungary in Kaposvar and looped around Lake Balaton before finishing in Balatonfured, was largely flat, and always likely to yield a sprint finish.
Cavendish tailed his Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl team-mate, Michael Morkov, ahead of the final sprint, before making his move with 300 metres to go and taking the lead with just over 100 remaining.
Despite pressure from Démare (Groupama–FDJ) and Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates), Cavendish held on for his 16th Giro stage win and 53rd on a grand tour.
After his success in France last summer, Cavendish ended his 2021 season with a nasty crash in Ghent, Belgium, which left him in intensive care with broken ribs and a punctured lung.
The accident mirrored those during Cavendish’s five years without a grand-tour win, when he suffered multiple crashes and serious injuries, which appeared to suggest that his time at the summit of cycling had ended.
In 2017, he suffered a fractured shoulder during the Tour de France and he cracked a rib at Tirreno–Adriatico the following year. He was not selected for the Tour de France in both 2019 and 2020.
However, his quartet of victories last year marked a superb comeback, which has now been furthered by success in the Giro. Cavendish’s win continues a strong British start to the Giro after Simon Yates won the second stage, a time-trial in Budapest, on Saturday.
Yates, who rides for the Australian outfit Team BikeExchange-Jayco, sits second in the general classification, trailing the Dutchman, Mathieu van der Poel, an Alpecin-Fenix rider.
For Yates, it was a rare victory in a time-trial, as the 29-year-old from Bury usually thrives up in the mountains, and he will be eyeing a second success in three days at the Giro’s fourth stage today in Sicily.
Designed for the climbers, the route begins in Avola and heads north, finishing with a ride up Mount Etna that involves a mile of near-uninterrupted elevation.
