Mark Cavendish looks set for an incredible few days on the Tour de France after making it through the last of the high mountains today. The British sprinter and four of his Deceuninck-QuickStep team mates formed the last group on the road today on the way to the summit of Luz Ardiden.
Cavendish, Dries Devenyns, Tim Declercq, Davide Ballerini and Michael Mørkøv were just over 32 minutes down on the stage winner - Tadej Pogačar (UAE-Team Emirates) - and they had the broom wagon right behind them. But they were almost seven minutes inside the time cut, meaning they comfortably stayed in the race; Cavendish last man to cross the line today.
And with a likely sprinters' stage tomorrow, Cavendish could be in with a chance of taking his fifth stage win of Tour 2021 and the 35th of his career, which would set a new all-time record.
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The British sprinter will also fancy his chances on Sunday on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, where he has already won a record four times. Even if he doesn't win either of those stages - and that seems unlikely - it would now take a crash or very unexpected racing action for him to lose the green jersey.
Cavendish and his team can now look to the days ahead to bring a glorious finale to their Tour de France, during which the 36-year-old sprinter has roared back to his best after several years in the wilderness due to illness.
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Today the team went all-in to keep him in green; ensuring they mopped up the points at the intermediate sprint and later committing four riders to him again to get him up the climbs.
The intermediate sprint today was a chance for Cavendish's closest rival for the green jersey, Michael Matthews (BikeExchange), to score points and close the gap. However, Deceuninck-QuickStep made sure Matthews didn't slip away in the early breakaway.
Instead, they put Julian Alaphilippe in that move and he made sure to win the sprint and take the maximum 20 points on offer. There were four riders in that breakaway that was first to reach the sprint at Pouzac after 62.7km.
That meant the sprint back in the bunch for points offered a maximum of 11 points - for 5th over the line. Those 11 points were taken by Cavendish after a lead-out from Mørkøv. Furthermore, Mørkøv was next over the line, taking 10 points, followed by Matthews who took nine points.
Cavendish now has 298 points at the top of the points classification, with Matthews on 260. But the race is now moving into stages where Cavendish is likely to open that gap further as his sprint has proven so much better than his rivals over the last three weeks.
The only question now for Cavendish is whether his stage win tally will stay at four or go as high as six.
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