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Once last chance on the Champs Elysees for Mark Cavendish to make history at the 2021 Tour

  • Ron 

Brit Mark Cavendish will have to wait until tomorrow’s laps on the Champs-Elysees for his chance to add on more Tour de France victory to his palmares and break Eddy Merckx’s stage win record at the race.

Friday’s largely flat 207km stage from Mourenx promised to be one of two remaining opportunities for Cavendish to move clear of Merckx and score his 35th career Tour stage win, but a powerful breakaway and a weak chase handed the win to Slovenia’s Matej Mohoric.

The Slovenian champion attacked out of the break with 26km to go and rode solo to the finish to give Bahrain Victorious a win, their third of the race, two days after their team hotel was searched by police in Pau as part of an anti-doping investigation.

The scene had been set for Cavendish to make history with the stage start in Mourenx – the town where Merckx took one of his most famous wins after a 140km solo attack in the Pyrenees during the 1969 Tour, the first of the Belgian’s five overall victories.

Merckx himself was on hand to embrace Cavendish in front of the velodrome that bares the 76-year-old’s name, wishing the Manxman well in his pursuit of history.

But, despite the parcours, a sprint was never guaranteed given that 15 of the 23 teams in the Tour started the day without a stage win so far, desperate to make their mark as time runs out, although that the number would not change by the finish.

Early crashes delayed the formation of a meaningful break, but by the mid-point of the day 20 riders had made their way up the road.

The gap to the peloton was still small, less than one minute, but nobody was helping Israel Start-Up Nation – one of those winless teams who were hoping to tee up Andre Greipel on his 39th birthday – and, once they gave up the chase, the elastic snapped and the advantage ballooned.

The escapees began to attack one another inside the final 45km, but it was the acceleration of Mohoric with 26km to go that stuck as those behind bickered over who should do the chasing.

The peloton rolled home some 21 minutes later, with Tadej Pogacar needing only to make it to Paris to defend his title as he boasts a lead of five minutes and 45 seconds over Jonas Vingegaard.

With Pogacar in such control of the yellow jersey, it has been Cavendish’s pursuit of the record which has driven the narrative of this Tour, so it is perhaps fitting the fight will go all the way to Paris.

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