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PEDAL TO<br />
THE METTLE<br />
At 34 and showing absolutely no signs of slowing down, road sprinter Mark<br />
Cavendish is well on his way to becoming the cycling world’s G.O.A.T. We<br />
find out what it takes to get McLaren to name a color for him and how his<br />
association with Richard Mille developed.<br />
WORDS WEI KOH<br />
IMAGES RICHARD MILLE<br />
You’ve shown incredible resilience coming back from<br />
crashes and Epstein-Barr and the mental effects that<br />
being out of competition must bring. What are the most<br />
important things when it comes to recovery, both physical<br />
and mental?<br />
The hardest thing has been dealing with the pressure from<br />
people that are ignorant to those physical and mental effects.<br />
Whether they be media, rivals, or others involved in the<br />
sport. At the end of the day, I’m human, not a machine. If<br />
a watch has a mechanical fault or loses a second, it can be<br />
fixed and immediately works like nothing had happened. A<br />
human body obviously needs time to get over the illness or<br />
injury, and time for rehabilitation. Add to that the fact that<br />
top level sport is all about performing at the absolute peak<br />
of your capacity — a capacity level that will have taken a<br />
number of years to build up in order to even reach that point<br />
in the first place — it therefore means that coming back from<br />
zero, of course, can take a while.<br />
I’m just incredibly lucky I’ve got a small amount of<br />
wonderful people around me: family, friends, sponsors, that<br />
have shown support and faith and reminded me of what I can<br />
achieve when I’m at my best.<br />
Did your impressive result at the London Six Day at the<br />
end of 2019 help set you up for 2020?<br />
Definitely riding the velodrome has helped me during my<br />
career. Although road and track cycling both fundamentally<br />
use two wheels, a chain and handlebars, they’re actually<br />
quite different sports. You could say one is like IndyCar<br />
racing and the other like Dakar Rally.<br />
The high-intensity efforts on the track for sure help for<br />
my sprint speed, as does using different muscle groups from<br />
riding a single fixed gear. And riding in a tight bunch with no<br />
brakes helps me stay sharp mentally.<br />
At 34 and four Tour de France wins away from matching<br />
Eddy Merckx’s record, what gives you the motivation<br />
every morning to wake up and train like a badass and<br />
focus on winning?<br />
Simply, winning. Since I was a kid I had to try and win at<br />
everything, not just cycling. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t<br />
always win, but I always strived for it. It wasn’t good enough<br />
for me to be the best I could be; I had to be the best of<br />
everyone. As I’ve gotten older, the purpose of winning has<br />
changed, but the desire to win hasn’t. When I was young,<br />
BACK TO THE FUTURE 95
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