Tour de Force, by Mark Cavendish

Title: Tour de Force - My History-Making Tour de France
Author: Mark Cavendish (with Daniel Friebe and Peter Cossins)
Publisher: Ebury
Year: 2021
Pages: 278
Order: Penguin
What it is: Volume three of the chamois memoirs of Mark Cavendish, sprinteur - the one in which he equals Eddy Merck’s record for the number of Tour de France stages won
Strengths: The name on the cover
Weaknesses: Cavendish’s previous chamoirs have had a bit of meat on the bone, this one doesn’t, it’s little better than a DVD commentary track for his 2021 Tour

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# Miracles

“To be honest, I no longer believed in his comeback. Miracles can sometimes happen in cycling. I think that’s such a miracle.” Thus spake Eddy Merckx, the cyclist the old joke has it that even God wanted to be. You might therefore think he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to religious phenomena. But, as a recovering Roman Catholic, I do sometimes find myself wondering if people actually know what a miracle really is.

Scene: Heaven. God, Jesus, Saint Peter and the Angel Gabriel sit around a table discussing that week’s prayer-bag of miracle requests received from the people of the United Kingdom.

St Peter: Dozens of Ed Sheeran fans are praying that ‘Bad Habits’ gets to number one in the charts.

God: It would take a miracle to stop that from happening!

Jesus: Malcolm from Glasgow is praying that he recovers quickly from Covid as he’s a frontline worker with the NHS and feels he needs to be there for others.

The Angel Gabriel: 7,392 English football fans are praying that the whole of the Italian football team catches Covid so England can win Euro 2020, sorry, 2021, with a walkover.

Jesus: Margaret in Cardiff is praying that her 101-year-old mother, who is in a nursing home in Bristol, doesn’t catch Covid.

St Peter: We’ve got thousands of students praying their university applications are successful.

Jesus: Patrick from Birmingham is praying that his 76-year-old mother recovers from Covid.

The Angel Gabriel: Fans of Sha’Carri Richardson are praying that her marijuana positive can disappear so she can go to the Olympics.

Jesus: Peter in Dundee, who is 76 and has asthma, is praying that he doesn’t catch Covid.

St Peter: Khadija from Afghanistan is praying that her asylum request is processed promptly.

Jesus: Maria from Oxford is praying that her 91-year-old father recovers quickly from Covid.

The Angel Gabriel: The whole of the British cycling media is praying that Mark Cavendish can equal Eddy Merckx’s Tour de France record at the current Tour, but not break it, so they can get another year out of the story.

God: Mark Cavendish? But he hasn’t won a Tour stage in years! Him winning again would indeed be a miracle! And quite cool too, don’t you think? Holy Ghost, make it so!

Jesus: Christ Almighty, dad, you cannot be serious! There’s people dying of Covid down there and you want to give their weekly miracle to a cyclist?

God: I’ve told you before son, stop taking your name in vain, it’s a sin!

Tim de Waele / Corbis / Getty

# Fucks Given

42: Boy Racer - My Journey to Tour de France Record-Breaker (2010, 384 pages)
27: At Speed - My Life in the Fast Lane (2013, 314 pages)
83: Tour de Force - My History-Making Tour de France (2021, 278 pages)

While Cavendish’s use of the Anglo-Saxon profanity seemed endearingly authentic in the previous volumes of his chamois memoirs, here the various fucks, fuckeds and fuckings feel wearying and lazy. After three books, it’s fair to say that the number of fucks you should give is in inverse proportion to the number of fucks he gives. Tour de Force is easily the runt of the Cavendish chamoir litter.

Alexandre Marchi / Gamma-Rapho / Getty

# Tour de Force

Bradley Wiggins - Tour de Force, by John Deering (2012)
Lance Armstrong - Tour de Force, by Dan Coyle (2005)
Tour de France/Tour de Force - A Visual History of the World’s Greatest Bicycle Race, by James Startt (2000)
See also books by Roman Quaedvlieg (2020), Kodjovi Agba (2018), CE Woodworth (2018), Christianna Brand (2011), Elizabeth White (2009), Isabella Roach (2006) and many, many others.

“Tour de force” is a cycling cliché, the sort of unimaginative line someone like Richard Williams will roll out in the Guardian for even a crap cycling book like Bert Wagendorp’s Ventoux. How the brains trust of publisher Ebury, Cavendish’s literary agent David Luxton (Brendan Gallagher’s Corsa Rosa - A History of the Giro d’Italia), and the PR specialists at Wasserman came up with it as a title for this Christmas stocking-filler is beyond me. Maybe clichéitis is a previously unnoticed side-effect of Covid,

Jean Catuffe / Getty

# Stages Won in a Single Tour de France

1930: Charles Pélissier won eight of that Tour’s 21 stages and finished ninth overall after more than 4,800 kilometres of racing

1970: Eddy Merckx won eight of that Tour’s 29 stages (including prologue and split stages) and finished first overall after more than 4,200 kilometres of racing

1974: Eddy Merckx won eight of that Tour’s 27 stages (including prologue and split stages) and finished first overall after nearly 4,100 kilometres of racing

1976: Freddy Maertens won eight of that Tour’s 27 stages (including prologue and split stages) and finished eighth overall after more than 4,000 kilometres of racing

Cavendish’s best haul in a single Tour was six stages out of 21 won in the 2009 Tour in which he finished 128th overall after nearly 3,500 kilometres of racing.

Pascal Pavani / AFP / Getty

# Ghost Writers

Tom Fordyce, Geraint Thomas’s spectral sidekick, knocked out The Tour According to G - My Journey to the Yellow Jersey in the three months between the end of the 2018 Tour and the book’s publication in November, in time to be stuffed into the Christmas stockings of lads and dads the length and breadth of the UK.

Tour de Force was also knocked out in three months, between the end of the 2021 Tour de France and its publication in November, in time to be stuffed into the Christmas stockings of lads and dads the length and breadth of the UK. But unlike Thomas’s book, it took two ghosts to produce Tour de Force.

Cavendish’s Bosley for his earlier chamoirs, Daniel Friebe, has been joined here by the ubiquitous Peter Cossins who, in the time it has taken Cavendish to produce three volumes of his chamoirs, has put his name to at least a dozen books. He was the ghost behind Born to Ride (2012, Yellow Jersey Press) as well as half of the ghost team of this; the co-author of Le Tour 100 (2013, Cassell) and Two Days in Yorkshire (2014, Pave); translator of A Clean Break (2014, Bloomsbury); and author of The Monuments (2014, Bloomsbury), Everybody’s Friend (2015, Pave), Alpe d’Huez (2015, Aurum), Ultimate Etapes (2016, Aurum), Butcher, Blacksmith, Acrobat, Sweep (2017, Yellow Jersey Press), Full Gas (2018, Yellow Jersey Press), The Yellow Jersey (2019, Yellow Jersey Press), and A Cyclist’s Guide to the Pyrenees (2021, Great Northern Books). Two heads may be better than one, but on the evidence here the same cannot be said of ghost writers, with Tour de Force making The Tour According to G look like, well, a tour de force. Which it is not.

Tim De Waele / Getty

# A Little Bit of Politics

Cavendish on why echelons are a bit like Brexit:

when the wind’s hitting the bunch from the side and echelons start to form - basically little groups fanning across the width of the road, as everyone tries to shelter - some rogue thinks that he can ride on his own from one of these echelons to the one in front. Even Eddy Merckx isn’t closing the gap; you’re much better off working together. The animal kingdom tells us that - the tribe is always stronger than the individual. But these guys think they can do it better alone. It’s like the cycling equivalent of Brexit. They think they’re strong enough to do it on their own, but they’re just going to fuck everyone, especially themselves. You’re going to end up in a worse situation than where you started from.

Oli Scarff / WPA Pool / Getty

# Will This Do?

A lot of Tour de Force has a “this one time, at bandcamp” feel to it, as if written by Private Eye’s Phil Space and Polly Filler, with Cavendish sharing the most inane details with us (only without anyone stuffing a flute up their fanny):

I flew to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, where I had a long layover before my flight to Brest, and bumped in to Michael Matthews as I was coming out of the toilets. He’s another green jersey, a sprint rival, but I’ve always got on really well with him. We got some lunch at YO! Sushi and talked about all kinds of shit, but mainly the Tour: what we were going to do there, our form, our teams.

Getty

# The Record

I think he’s as pissed off with it as I am. You can’t make a comparison between us as racers. It’s no more than a comparison of a number - a number that’s actually pretty arbitrary.

Lionel Bonaventure / AFP / Getty

# Tour de France Stages Won

Eddy Merckx: 34 stages in seven Tours (1969 - six, including three ITTs; 1970 - eight, including four ITTs; 1971 - four, including two ITTs; 1972 - six, including three ITTs; 1974 - eight, including two ITTs; 1975 - two, including two ITTs; 1977 - none)
nb: Merckx was also part of a TTT-winning squad on six occasions (1969 - one; 1970 - one; 1971 - one; 1972 - one; 1974 - one; 1977 - one)

Mark Cavendish: 34 stages in 14 Tours (2007 - none; 2008 - four; 2009 - six; 2010 - five; 2011 - five; 2012 - three; 2013 - two; 2014 - none; 2015 - one; 2016 - four; 2017 - none; 2018 - none; 2019 - none; 2021 - four; 2023 - none)

Chris Graythen / Getty

Tour de Force’s description of Cavendish’s Carcassonne win:

Morky surged, using García Cortina’s slipstream to pick up pace. It was now so blurred I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I was so far in the red I couldn’t think properly.

As Morky went, the others started slowing down. He kept going on. He passed García Cortina, and then I started passing him, kept my speed going, and going, and Boom! I crossed the line. Win number 34.

I was completely fucked. I couldn’t raise my hands off the bars, just about managing a one-handed celebration. I couldn’t understand what had just gone off, but I’d fucking done it. Everyone would now shut up.