If he wins in Nîmes, the British sprinter will sign his 34th Tour de France success and equal Eddy Merckx’s record for victories
Cavendish on the royal road
Here we are. The hypothesis, totally improbable three years ago, and still quite eccentric at the start of this Tour de France, is in the process of materializing. Mark Cavendish is only one victory away from Eddy Merckx’s record and it is difficult to see who could prevent him from winning it. Since leaving Brest, the Isle of Man sprinter has been rolling out his plan without a hitch. The successive departures of Caleb Ewan (retirement), Tim Merlier (retirement) and Arnaud Démare (out of time) cleared the way for him and his Deceuninck-Quick Step train does the rest to take him to a plateau for each massive packing. Winner at Fougeres, Châteauroux and Valence, Cavendish still has four potential opportunities to reach his goal and then overtake it.
Probable sprint in Nîmes
Between Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux and Nîmes, Cavendish and the other sprinters will in principle have plenty of time to admire the magnificent landscape, even if they will have to refocus as the finish approaches, the race passes through Uzès, where the intermediate sprint is judged, then near the Pont du Gard, one of the wonders of Roman antiquity, for a final identical to that of 2019 in the prefecture of Gard. “Normally, it should be done at all for the sprinters! », Estimates Thierry Gouvenou, the tracer of the Tour about the 159.4 kilometers which connect Drôme to Gard through the gorges of the Ardèche, to Vallon-Pont-d’Arc (km 57), in the initial part.
But if there is no major difficulty, there could be pitfalls. “We have multiplied the changes of direction,” he warns, however. “The danger can come from the wind”, thus evoking a possible risk of edges. Departure from Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux at 1:30 p.m. (launched at 1:40 p.m.), arrival in Nîmes around 5:22 p.m. (schedule calculated as an average of 43 km / h).
The man to watch: Bouhanni turns around
Mark Cavendish’s rivals are no longer very numerous (Wout Van Aert, Jasper Philipsen, Michael Matthews…) but there is one who is hanging on. At 29, Nacer Bouhanni has still not won on the Tour and he is getting impatient. On this edition, it turns around from the start. Once second, twice third, once fourth, the Arkéa-Samsic sprinter wants more: “the goal is victory. My legs are good, but you have to do the perfect sprint to win on this Tour, and it still doesn’t matter much. If you make a parasitic effort before the sprint, it is not possible to win. “
So far, in fact, Bouhanni has always stumbled over the perfect organization of the Deceuninck, when his was disorderly. A concern that he will no longer have with the abandonment of Dan McLay and Clément Russo on Wednesday. Without his two teammates, Bouhanni will have to fend for himself almost alone.
The prognosis of “South West”
*** Cavendish ** Van Aert, Philipsen * Bouhanni, Sagan, Colbrelli
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