Free At Speed: My Life in the Fast Lane by Cavendish Mark Page A

a disaster. I’d lost Mark’s wheel on the way in to the finish, he’d carried on and done his own sprint to come in third, and I was livid. That night, after the stage, I went to see him in his room.
    “Listen, mate, what you did today … that’s not on.” I didn’t raise my voice, but he clearly got the message. From that evening on, our understanding was practically telepathic.
    Before stage 6 to Gueugnon, the planning and homework was key. This was another area where Mark and I were perfectly in sync and in which Mark was the model pro. The previous night, after my win in Montargis, we’d done our routine, painstaking virtual reconnaissance of the final kilometers on Google Maps Street View.
    Whatever conclusions we drew from that, Erik Zabel would then go ahead of the race to test, and he would relay his observations back to Rolf in the team car. Rolf would then give us the vital information over race radio. Victory or defeat on this stage, we realized, was going to hinge on the final corner—a right-angle left-hander at 800 meters to go. The message from Erik was that it was blind, but if we took the right line, we didn’t need to brake.
    Intel like this took on even more significance now that we couldn’t necessarily dictate terms in the final 2 km. Mark’s role also became more important for the same reason. It’s a common misconception that a lead-out man is just a second-rate sprinter, someone who can sprint at 55 kph and whose finish line is the 250-to-go sign, but who can’t sprint at 60 kph from there to the finish. In reality, the two jobs are totally different. When he’s not part of a team riding like aerobatic display planes—with riders peeling off at predetermined points until only the sprinter is left—a lead-out man’s work will often consist of multiple explosive efforts, or one long one very close to his maximum power. After that, the sprint, those last 250 or 200 meters, aren’t about how many watts I can put out, they’re about how many I can put out when I’m on the limit, because I should already be on the limit when I’m on my lead-out man’s wheel.
    Mark’s other fantastic asset was his ability to stay cool. This was another thing we shared. Both of us treated sprints like a math exam: something you’d prepared for, watching videos, studying maps, imagining what questions you’d be asked, visualizing your answers, and then on the day thinking as quickly as possible but never forgetting to do just that—think. In everything you ever read or see about sprinting, great emphasis is placed on the speed, the danger, the thrills, and the adrenaline, and I think perhaps some sprinters get caught up in or perhaps fall in love with that tearaway image of themselves. Neither Mark nor I ever thought of ourselves or our jobs in those terms; our approach was calm, studious, clinical. What I’ve said before about staying physically fresher by saving emotional energy also applied to Mark.
    This was a classic example: We were swamped by Garmin in the penultimate kilometer, and their train rattled headlong toward that last left-hander with 800 to go, while Mark laid off them, hanging back 10 or 20 meters. By doing that, we knew—thanks to our prep and Erik’s—that we could freewheel around the corner while the Garmin riders, Julian Dean and Robbie Hunter, had to slow and then accelerate again into the finishing straight. We weren’t trying to dive-bomb them out of the bend—just to save a few pedal revs, a few watts, which would then make the difference for Mark when he started to wind it up, and for me when it was time to go at the 250-meter mark.
    The previous day’s sprint, like all of the others so far in this race, had been a “power sprint,” an exercise in strength more than speed. I’d had to labor the gear, churn rather than spin it. This one was much more up my street. I kicked and knew instantly not only that I’d won but also that my jump was back to its