There is one race finale that keeps Michael Mørkøv up at night. It was the last day of the 2021 Tour de France, and Quick Step’s star lead-out man was guiding Mark Cavendish round a sweeping right-hand bend, onto Paris’s Champs-Élysées. Until that point, the Tour had gone almost perfectly for the double act. Dreamlike, really. With Mørkøv as his pilot, Cavendish had dashed to four stage wins, taking his tally to 34, and matching the all-time record to which only Eddy Merckx previously laid claim.
On that blue-skied Sunday in Paris, however, Mørkøv believes his teammate should have surpassed it.
“We were in like seventh or eighth position,” the Dane recounts. “He was in my wheel, like he was the whole Tour, but at the Place de la Concorde, he deviated away, and he went to the wheel of [Wout] van Aert.
“I strongly believe that he did it because he was a bit concerned about securing his green jersey, more than being
