Cycling: 'We might pay for it next week, but it's full gas again'

Mark Cavendish tells Alasdair Fotheringham how he can wrap up the race for the green jersey

(GETTY IMAGES)

After a weekend climbing the cruel peaks of the Pyrenees, the Tour today returns to the relative flat and, as such, the focus flicks back to Britain's Mark Cavendish and his attempt to rack up as many stage victories as possible en route to Paris.

Cavendish has already won two stages and for six days wore the green jersey awarded to the most consistent sprinter. But he wants more – and soon. He has his eye on no fewer than four stages before the race hits the Alps next Sunday, a huge, but not impossible target. And on yesterday's rest day here in Limoges, his mind was already racing ahead to meet the challenge.

"For us it's full gas again," the 24-year-old says with a brief wave towards his Columbia-HTC team-mates as he sits on the lawn outside their hotel. "We might pay for it in the third week, but it's a risk we've got to take. We've got to stay concentrated. There are four opportunities in the next week and I don't want to miss out on any of them."

If Cavendish sounds like a driven man off the bike, his team-mates say that the Briton concentrates so fiercely when racing he sometimes blanks them out. "Somebody asked Mark during a Tour of Italy stage whether he was up for the sprint, but Mark was so wrapped up he didn't even hear him," recalls another team-mate, Australian Michael Rogers. "He's so focused on his job, that's what gets him the wins."

In order to smooth Cavendish's path to victory as much as possible, Columbia-HTC have hired the former sprint star and Tour points jersey record holder Erik Zabel as an adviser. "Erik was really useful in the first week and he's coming back on the race as of today," Cavendish says. The German's return is another sign that things are getting serious again. "He'll be checking out the finishes, seeing if everything's like we expect it to be."

Cavendish attributes his rookie success in the Milan-San Remo Classic this March – which he won by a tyre's width – to Zabel's advice. In the Tour, he's winning by two or more bike lengths, but Cavendish plays down the difference.

"To do well here I had to get better in the climbs, but stay strong in the sprints, and I've managed that. But I don't think about my rivals. My only goal is to win and win again in the next weeks. I just don't do comparisons."

If Cavendish goes on raising his arms in victory, making it to Paris as points competition winner will become a formality. But he refuses to look so far ahead. "It was a massive emotion to be wearing the points jersey, just spectacular. That's why I went all out, I wore green everything.

"My socks didn't match but I said 'sod it,' I didn't care. I always said if I got the green, I was going to be extravagant with it. And I was. If it [the green jersey] does finally come again, that's brilliant, and if not, then not. But I don't want to defend it all out, wear it until the 14th stage and then go home burnt out. It'll be disappointing if I don't get it, but it won't be a failure."

This year's Tour has had an exceptionally tough first week, and Cavendish says "it's had an impact on everybody. It's not easy in the mountains for us sprinters, we go as hard as the front guys and climbers, just a lot slower. The Tour is 21 days of total concentration and, more than the physical effort, that's what gets to you. So I'm trying to rest, do every little thing off the bike right, right down to lying down as much as I can even when I'm not sleepy."

While Cavendish tried to stay horizontal yesterday, Tour favourite Alberto Contador was busy playing down the rivalry between himself and his team-mate Lance Armstrong, arguing that "everybody works for everybody in our squad".

His words rang hollow, given that Armstrong is barely making a secret of his intentions to win an eighth Tour, but they may have the effect of papering over the Armstrong-Contador conflict at least until the Alps next Sunday.

Meanwhile, Cavendish is poised to strike.