LIVING HISTORY
It was a quiet astonishment that greeted the news of Mark Cavendish’s return to the Tour de France. Something so unexpected you wouldn’t believe it until you saw him sat on his bike on the start line of stage one.
Arriving in Paris before heading west for the Grand Départ in Brest, the winner of 30 stages had dinner at the airport with Michael Matthews, the Australian describing his rival as being like a newbie doing the Tour for the first time. It didn’t matter whether Cavendish won a stage, Matthews said, it was simply special enough that he was back at his race.
In some sense that was true. The Tour de France is ultimately about the mysticism that surrounds the race, the ephemeral nature of an event that burns so brightly, and Cavendish is one more star to add to that collision of supernovas. Without him, the whole thing is much dimmer. And yet: “Nobody expects me to win but listen,” he said. “I wouldn’t go
