Albertville—Valence, 190km
The fairytale comeback and the decade-ago throwback continue. Surely all of us are loving the intoxicating nostalgia of it all. But should your cycling fandom be less than a decade old, allow me to preface this report by trying to inject back into you those 2008-to-2011 vibes so that you too can rewind with the rest of us. To a time when the last movie installments of the Harry Potter franchise were each internationally anticipated, but the moody vampires and werewolves of Twilight were angling for attention. All busted a gut laughing at Stepbrothers and The Hangover. Heath Ledger’s Joker thoroughly captivated and impressed in the Dark Knight that was the pinnacle of superhero movies. The water-cooler TV show was obviously Lost, but a couple new ones seemed promising like Modern Family and Breaking Bad…and for some reason Jersey Shore was also a “can’t miss” weekly event. Miley Cyrus mused about some sort of Party in the USA, and Taylor Swift was still a country music star. Every summer music festival was headlined by top rappers like Jay-Z and Kanye, and indie rock bands like Passion Pit and Florence + the Machine. Additionally, all knew the words to Coldplay’s Viva la Vida that was played every hour on the hour by every radio station. It was a time when the villainous Limewire infected and crashed every high schooler’s family Desktop PC. This was when people traded out their iPod Nanos for a new iPod Touch that they carried in their pocket alongside their flip phone—mine flipped in two different directions! Facebook reached its zenith: the exact moment was surely when it had legions upon legions of users—to the exact hour—harvesting their virtual crops on Farmville to buy virtual tractors for show. Swine Flu was the worst pandemic since Spanish Influenza. Obama was fresh in office, bin Laden was taken out, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Goven-ator of Cali-forn-ya. Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps were setting World Records in Beijing. The world discovered what vuvuzelas were at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. And I was in high school running 50-to-60 miles a week to drop my two-mile time in Track and do my part for the team’s goal to qualify for State in Cross Country. Every July morning, I would get up just past dawn to knock out a 7-to-10-mile run. Upon finishing the run, I would plop down on the floor—because I was much too sweaty to sit on the sofa—and listen to Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen tell me about every chateau and Gothic cathedral in France for hours on end. Yes, those summers were the glory days: where I would watch Fabian Cancellara slip into Yellow early. I would time the 15-minute increment to shower at what was most likely going to be the lull of the stage so that I would not miss seeing Andy and Frank Schleck doing battle with Alberto Contador and Cadel Evans. As I would quickly break from the action to water plants in the backyard at my dad’s insistence, I would muse about the fairytale run in Yellow Tommy Voeckler was having in 2011 before his Hectorian Fall. In my eyes, the skinny-as-a-rail Bradley Wiggins had the sharpest sideburns in the world. And I really did actually wonder if Andre Greipel was a Gorilla on the bike. But of course, all these generational riders were still dwarfed by one man. Yes, there was quite a good reason I originally thought mountain stages were “slow.” There was quite a good reason—beyond aestheticism—I so fondly cherish the newly-invented-HD picture-memories I have of the chateaus, land art, and sunflowers along the route of very flat stages beyond anything else from that era. It was because as I watched those flat stages the anticipation would build to see my original favorite rider win yet another bunch sprint off the back of the greatest lead-out train that ever was or shall be; a lead out train so organized and precise in its execution even the Navy Seals would drop their jaws.
Yes, this is all the nostalgia brought back to me, and perhaps many others, as we watch Quickstep’s Manx Missile Mark Cavendish take win after win this Tour, like he did of old in the days of yore just described. After much threatening and some late flirtation with crosswinds in the closing furiously fast kilometers of the stage, Deceuninck-Quickstep completely and utterly owned the finale to brilliantly lead out Mark Cavendish for his 3rd Stage win this Tour, the 33rd Tour de France stage win of his career. Truly, today most of all, this Quickstep Wolfpack looked their most reminiscent of that HTC-Highroad lead out train that led to so many of Cavendish’s victories I saw sitting in sweat every July morning so long ago. After his second stage win this Tour, I had declared that we were all back on Record Watch. Even more so today, the Cannibal Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 Tour stages is no longer at all safe. So let us have a conversation that was probably taking place a decade ago in 2011, finally now is the appropriate time to rehash it.
In 2011, with already 20 Tour stages wins and still years and years left in his career, and no decline to speak of on the horizon: Mark Cavendish seemed a shoe-in to break Eddy Merckx’s stage record eventually. With far less cycling knowledge back then, I was not privy to the conversations transpiring between the pros, journalists, pundits, and obsessed fans. But surely! Surely people must have been making comparisons about when Merckx and Cav tied for stages—and that day was assured to be soon—whose accomplishment would be more impressive? Eddy Merckx the Cannibal is the greatest cyclist of all time, he has won 5 Tours, 5 Giri, a Vuelta, 3 World Championships, 19 Monuments (multiple of all five), and every prestigious stage race and Classic of the era—save Paris-Tours which he was once in a position to win but he gifted it to a teammate. All that to say, Merckx is not only defined and known by the 34 Tour stage record. And yet it also cannot be denied that the 34 Tour stages is one of the more impressive and important records Merckx holds—it is much more than the random tougher-than-Final-Jeopardy trivia stat the broadcast’s resident stats nerd creates for an intruding on-screen graphic for the slowest moment of the game. The 34 stages help give credence to Merckx’s “Cannibal” nickname—he really did gobble up and devour every single race and stage he could. And to look at the type of win each of the 34 was shows the apex of versatility that shall never been seen again. Conversely, at what I think shall come to be scene as the apex of specialization in the sport of cycling, Mark Cavendish came along in 2008 to start threatening that 34 Tour stages record by exclusively winning full bunch sprints. So, I pose the question again: If or when they tie on 34, whose accomplishment is more impressive? So, in hopeful anticipation that that day shall come within the next fortnight, let us do our best steel-manning of both cases. To over-clarify, should Eddy Merckx lose the Tour stage record, that shall not mean Cav will eclipse him as the GOAT, the Greatest of All Time. We are simply comparing what is a more impressive feat: Merckx’s dominant versality or Cav’s dominatingly thorough specialization?
The elder, the defender, first. Eddy Merckx won his first stage of the Tour de France in 1969—actually he won his first 6 that year—and he took his last couple in 1975. So in the span of just 7 seven years—really 6 because he did not ride the Tour in 1973—Merckx won all 34 of his stages (not even including Team Time Trial victories). In both 1970 and 1974, Merckx won 8 stages in a single Tour, this feat is tied for a record. Are you starting to get the picture of this Cannibal’s dominance? A rudimentary breakdown of these 34 stages are: 16 Individual Time Trials and Prologues, 13 hilly or proper mountains, and 5 flat stage of which I gather 2 were full bunch sprints. That is a jack-of-all-trades…and master-of-all-trades. Those stats really do speak for themselves, there is very little any pundit can add onto that. The volume, by definition is there. It is the impressiveness of the Range that is the greatest factor in Merckx’s dominance.
Now to transition the case towards Cav’s favor by first playing a bit of a Devil’s Advocate with meager attempts to poke holes in Merckx’s impenetrable statistics. As stated, Merckx took all these wins in just 7 years. Of course it is impressive, of course he must have been the most dominating force of all time. But, uniquely, when up against Mark Cavendish, could winning all that in such a concentrated period not be a negative, but at least not a positive? Is Cavendish’s 13-year span of peaks and troughs a more impressive range of time? There were years where Cav took 6 stages, there were years he took 3, 2, or 1, but they still implied decade-long consistency. In fact, the case could be made that the dark years where Cavendish did not take a stage were all related to injury or illness. When Eddy Merckx “lost it”—that dominant mojo—he declined for 3 years and then retired. Meanwhile Cavendish had at least 1.5 major comebacks after a decline to beat a number of riders across and in multiple generations. Surely, the aspect of reinvention should at least slightly compare to Merckx’s impressive Range? A second Devil’s argument that may just end up being a compliment to Merckx. In all seriousness, was Merckx just too head-and-shoulders above the rest that this record is inflated, perhaps thanks to the era as well? If you look at the stage winners lists of the Tours Merckx competed in there were often well over 21 stages—half stages and a full hand of Time Trials were common. So potentially there were more opportunities for Merckx to win. Then the routes in that era were so much longer and harder (sometimes over 500-1000km longer than nowadays), did many of the stages—especially the Time Trials—just lend themselves to be won by the rider of the generation? And how comparable was the competition, was it just Merckx and five-or-six other generational riders of the era duking it out on all terrain, but beyond them even on their best day no one else in the peloton really had a shot to beat them? Could that actually be Mark Cavendish’s greatest strength? That in the greatest era of specialization, Mark Cavendish was blowing the greatest sprinting competition out of the water?
Though Cavendish’s 33 stage wins have all been bunch sprints, there was about as much variation to winning a bunch sprint as possible. They were anything from a perfect lead out by all 8 HTC teammates where he would win by 7 bike-lengths ahead of the nearest competition, to some where Cav would have to go gunslinging himself, wheel-surfing onto the next fastest man and come around to win in a bike-throw photo finish. With that said, to build up the positive best case for Mark Cavendish, I think it would just be most fun to see who he beat in these 33 Tour sprints. Here is a quick run down of the list, without repeating: Oscar Freire, Erik Zabel, Thor Hushovd, Gerald Ciolek, Jimmy Casper, Sebastien Chavanel, Gert Steegmans, Robbie McEwen, Romain Feiullu, Heinrich Haussler, Tyler Farrar, Cyril Lemoine, Samuel Dumoulin, Jerome Pineau, Greg Van Avermaet, Mark Renshaw, Edvald Boasson Hagen, JJ Rojas, Alessandro Petacchi, Julian Dean, Jurgen Roelandts, Philippe Gilbert, Tony Gallopin, Andre Greipel, Matt Goss, Peter Sagan, Luis Leon Sanchez, John Degenkolb, Alexander Kristoff, Arnaud Demare, Marcel Kittel, Edward Theuns, Christophe Laporte, Bryan Coquard, Dan McLay, Dylan Groenewegen, Nacer Bouhanni, Jasper Philipsen, Michael Matthews, Cees Bol, and Wout Van Aert today. And those are only the riders that finished within the Top 5 on the Tour stages he won. Cav probably put Robbie McEwen into retirement. Tyler Farrar and Andre Greipel combined could have won 15-to-20 stages between them if Cav was not there to out sprint them. Even Marcel Kittel who got the better of him in 2013 and 2015, Cav came back to beat multiple times in 2016. And now this year he is beating a new generation of sprinters. I am willing to bet, or perhaps this is where the debate really begins: the quality of the listed beaten riders by Cav is better than the quality of climbers, sprinters, and Time Trialists Eddy Merckx bested. And to quickly address the lead out argument, that Cav was only good because he had the best lead out. That I say fair point and correct, but I actually view it as a strength for his case. Because, first, he did not have a lights-out lead out for every win. Second, all the best sprinters in the history of the sport have had a great lead out…why? Because they win, and success breeds success. Find a replay of the last kilometers of this Stage 10 of the 2021 Tour de France and you will see how dominate Quickstep was today. Quickstep has historically been great at lead out trains for years now, but today was particularly good and that is entirely because the team have so much confidence in Mark Cavendish, the best sprinter in the world right now. In the heyday, the HTC Highroad lead out was so great, because they had some much confidence that Mark Cavendish could finish off the job. Cav’s dominance bred that confidence which bred superior team support, Cav had the best lead out in the world thanks to his own accomplishments.
Now, is that last point about confidence and success breeding success potentially extremely similar to Eddy Merckx’s dominant 7 year run where he took stage after stage? Perhaps Merckx buoyed by confident of past success had an easier time making the magic happen again. It’s an interesting conversation, and I love to have it. That is why I chose to do it now on the 33rd Stage, in case there never is a 34th Stage win for Cav. But I do think there will be, the fairytale magic of this all is too hard to deny. Thus, it will be on the 34th win—if it transpires—that I shall hop off the fence one way or the other, and decide which string of 34 Tour stage wins I think is actually a greater accomplishment.
Fair warning, keep that nostalgic preface in mind: it will not be possible for me to be unbiased.
