Columbia’s Mark Cavendish, asked by Frankie Andreu on Versus whether he took special pleasure in beating Thor Hushovd this morning:
No, not at all. It’s irrelevant. It’s beating the mountains that gives me more gratification. You know that was a hard climb at the finish and it was about getting over that. I put the top of the climb as my finish line, and if I could get there I could get to the real finish. We only had three guys [George Hincapie, Tony Martin, and Maxime Montfort] after it and what a job those three guys did, all three of them emptied the tank the day before Mont Ventoux. That takes guts, that takes determination, that takes will, you know. to put me in the best position to win, and for me that goes down as my nicest victory just how it went with the climb and the way the guys rode. You know, we were on the back foot but we came through.
FA: Talk about emptying the tank, how much did you have to empty the tank to stay on that climb when Menchov was really going?
MC: It was hard. It was really hard, but you know when you’ve got guys staying with you and you give up then it’s not fair on them. I said if the guys stay with me, there’s no way I can give up, I have to go go go until I can’t go any more. It was grim, it was so, so grim at the top, it got really hard, my saddle was going further and further up my ass (laughs) and when I got over, it was a case of there wasn’t time to recover on the descent because we were full-gas chasing, but you know, we did it and it was nice.