Tour de France: Mark Cavendish takes miraculous stage 4 victory

Image 1 of 39

Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck-QuickStep) turned back time on Tuesday with a fairytale victory on stage 4 of the Tour de France, the 31st of his career and his first since 2016.

Cavendish’s career appeared to be fizzling out towards the end of last year but he has been reborn in 2021 and completed one of the greatest resurgences this sport has seen, taking place in Fougères, a scene of one of those 30 former glories.

It was a breathtaking finale, as Brent Van Moer (Lotto Soudal) survived from a two-man breakaway all the way to the final 200 metres. In fact, Cavendish’s sprint was complicated by the big Belgian, who by then was effectively moving backwards.

The sprint had been led out by stage 3 winner Tim Merlier, as Alpecin-Fenix switched tactics and plumped for Jasper Philipsen, and Cavendish managed to squeeze past Van Moer just as his rival was opening up. Philipsen had the jump, but Cavendish was able to outpower him through the gentle bend on the slightly uphill drag, where he raised his arms in delight before collapsing to the tarmac in tears.

Nacer Bouhanni (Arkéa-Samsic) came up to take second place, with Philipsen hanging on for third ahead of Michael Matthews (Team BikeExchange), Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe), and Cees Bol (Team DSM).

“I don't know what to say. Just being here is special enough, you know? I didn't think I'd get to come back to this race,” said Cavendish, whose last appearance came in 2018.

The significance of the location was not lost upon him. Chateauroux on Thursday had been scripted for the fairytale as the scene of his first Tour de France victory 13 years ago, but Fougères was where he took his third and final win for QuickStep in 2015 in his previous stint at the team.

After not winning for three years, he has resurrected his career at the Belgian squad, first taking some minor podiums, then raising his arms at the Tour of Turkey, then winning bigger at the Belgium Tour, and then earning a ticket to the Tour after the injury to the team’s lead sprinter, Sam Bennett.

“When you come to Deceuninck-QuickStep, they have the best riders in the world, so it wasn't even a thought to come here. But the stars aligned,” Cavendish said. “So many people didn't believe in me, and these guys do.”

There was no change to the overall standings, with Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix) retaining the yellow jersey ahead of the stage 5 time trial. There was a cherry on the cake for Cavendish, who pulled on the green jersey for the first time since 2016 after taking the lead of the points classification.

How it unfolded

There were no immediate attacks after the peloton had rolled out of Redon. That’s because the riders had organised a protest after the spate of crashes the previous afternoon, which many felt were caused in part by a dangerous run-in to Pontivy. Organised is perhaps the wrong word for it, as the planned stop at kilometre-zero didn’t come to pass – not until André Greipel (Israel Start-Up Nation) asked what was going on and came to the fore to bring the bunch to a halt a kilometre or so in.

After a couple of minutes, green jersey Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-QuickStep) was the rider who got things moving again, but the racing had to wait as the the bunch collectively enacted a go-slow for the best part of 10 kilometres.

Alpecin-Fenix were the first team to lift the tempo, while Brent Van Moer (Lotto Soudal) was the first to go on the attack. The Belgian was joined by Pierre-Luc Périchon (Cofidis), but no one else was interested in getting involved in the breakaway.

Despite just being a duo, they were only allowed an advantage of three minutes before the sprinters’ teams came to the front of the peloton to keep them on a short leash. Groupama-FDJ, Deceuninck-QuickStep, and Alpecin-Fenix were the teams doing the work, with Lotto Soudal having to change approach through Van Moer after their sprinter Caleb Ewan crashed out on Monday.

The terrain was largely flat, with no categorized climbs, and the situation remained calm and stable for much of the day. The gap between break and bunch dropped to two minutes with 100km to go and stayed there for the next 40km.

With 50km to go, Cavendish had a mechanical and required a bike change, but rejoined the peloton with a minimum of fuss. By that point, the gap had come down towards 1:30, and the intermediate sprint in Vitré was coming into view.

In the breakaway, Van Moer showed an interest and sprinted away from Périchon to claim maximum points, while Cavendish was first from the bunch after a lead out from Michael Mørkøv. Bouhanni was just behind, while Matthews, Greipel, and Sagan were also in the mix.

Heading into the final 30km, the gap stood at 1:15 but the battle for positions ahead of the final started to build up. It only really intensified once they were through the 20km-to-go banner, with Groupama-FDJ, Alpecin-Fenix, and Ineos Grenadiers on the left-hand side of the road, and Qhubeka-NextHash, Deceuninck-QuickStep and Trek-Segafredo on the right. Bora-Hansgrohe, Team DSM and Movistar were prominent through the middle.

There was a big surge into a sweeping right-hand bend off the main road and onto narrower streets, where Ineos’ Luke Rowe emerged in pole position.

With 15km to go, and the gap at 30 seconds, Périchon launched an acceleration but was unable to shake Van Moer. Soon after, the Belgian asked about the lack of cooperation before launching an attack of his own. After several seconds out of the saddle, he was away, taking 45 seconds into the final 13km. At that point, the urgency ebbed from the bunch, and it went out to a minute.

Under the 10km-to-go banner, the gap was 1:05, with the peloton still bunched up and no team really taking responsibility for the chase. With 7.5km to go, they turned off the country lane and out onto a wider road, and that’s where the pace was finally lifted, but the gap was still just above a minute.

DSM and Groupama-FDJ took up the reins initially, and then Alpecin-Fenix, although Lotto Soudal were placing blockers to disrupt the trains. The gap started to fall but Van Moer still entered the final 5km with a lead of 50 seconds.

Deceuninck-QuickStep then came to the fore and initiated an even bigger push, but that only lasted until 3.5km to go. Alpecin were also running out of numbers but DSM and Trek-Segafredo then took it up. With 2.5km to go, the gap had been reduced to 25 seconds.

Van Moer hit the false flat in the final 1500 metres with just 15 seconds in hand, desperately trying to hang on. At that point Alaphilippe hit the front, with Mørkøv and Cavendish in the wheel. Alpecin-Fenix, however, came through to perform the lead-out proper, with stage 3 winner Tim Merlier switching into support mode. 

He pulled aside and launched Philipsen before Van Moer had even been caught, with the Belgian finally caught just inside 200 metres to go. It was heartbreak for him – so close to a famous moment but instead resigned to a footnote in the Cavendish fairytale.