Cycling-Confident Cavendish gearing up for record breaking Tour stage win

FILE PHOTO: Cycling - Tour de France - Stage 7 - Mont-De-Marsan to Bordeaux - France - July 7, 2023 Astana Qazaqstan Team's Mark Cavendish is pictured ahead of stage 7 REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo

By Julien Pretot

FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters) - Mark Cavendish believes he has what it takes to claim a record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage win, even if the British rider, at the twilight of his career, will have to deal with serious competition.

The 39-year-old announced his retirement last year after crashing out of the Tour before changing his mind and extending his career for a final season with the Astana Qazaqstan team.

"Look, I don't have anything to lose," Cavendish told a press conference on Friday as he pin-pointed "five or six stages" that could be decided in a bunch sprint.

"It’s not like playing roulette, where if I don’t win here, I lose 34 Tour stages."

Cavendish, who has repeatedly said he would have been happy with just one Tour stage win when he turned professional, shares the record of stage wins on the race with the great Eddy Merckx, a five-time Tour de France champion.

"I know it makes a nice story to kind of say that, but it’s as simple as that. I have won 34 stages of the Tour de France. I have won the most number of stages along with the great Eddy Merckx. I'm just trying for more," he said.

"Whether that's one more, two more, 10 more, it doesn't matter. We have a job to do, which is to try to win and we will just take every day like that and approach it like any other bike race."

Cavendish, who won his first Tour stage in 2008, does not dominate the sprints like he used to, and won his last stages in the event in 2021.

However, the 2011 world champion, who has two victories in second-tier races this year, thinks he can do it.

"We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think it was possible. Of course, I don’t think any other team with a sprinter would be here if they didn’t think it was possible to win, and fundamentally that’s our job as cyclists, to try and win," he said.

(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Toby Chopra)