Sprinter hopes to beat Merckx’s record of 34 stage wins
Putting Mark Cavendish and Eddy Merckx in the same sentence when it comes to Tour de France records, or anything for that matter, is acceptably an eyebrow raising pairing, but Cavendish did it himself this past weekend.
The super sprinter, who has redefined confident in the last few years, joined other top riders David Millar, Lizzie Armitstead, Adam Blythe, Russell Downing, and Matt Brammeier at the annual Braveheart Cycling Fund Dinner.
At the dinner, Cavendish gave an engaging interview highlighted by his desire to surpass the seemingly unsurpassable: Eddy Merckx’s long held record of most stage wins at the Tour de France: 34 in all.
“I will try to outdo Eddy Merckx,” said the rider from the Isle of Man at the gala and quoted in a number of sources including feltet.dk, politiken.dk, and SportItalia.
Currently, Cavendish has 15 wins, leaving 19 more to go, but at only 25 years old, it doesn’t seem too incredible to speak of 34, especially considering that Cavendish has achieved 15 victories in his last three Tours de France (four in 2008, six in 2009, five in 2010). Still, a lot can happen between 15 and 34. As always, it seems highly likely that we can count on a lot of drama to go along with each Cavendish victory.
It seems possible that Merckx’s win tally might fall, but the overall dominance will live on – five overall victories at the Tour de France along with two editions where he won a mind boggling eight stages: 1970 and 1974. Of course, Merckx’s accolades only begin at that point, but I’ll resist rattling off the spectacular records.
Nearly 400 people attended the event and raised £35,000 in hopes of assisting up and coming Scottish cyclists.