Cavendish – “I'm lucky to have a guy who will put himself on the line for me...”

“It’s nice to keep winning. I’ve got a dedicated group of guys and I’ve got to thank them all. Michael Rogers has passed the Alpes and now he’s pulling massive turns – he’s always helping anyway – but today he did big, big turns and, obviously, the other guys wound themselves up as well.
“It takes a great group of guys to keep putting themselves out there. I’m really happy.
“I had to go from a bit further out today – 350 meters to go, while normally I go between 250 and 200… so it was really, really long. It was more like a breakaway in terms of sprinting.
“Mark held Julian Dean off and opened the door for me to go.
“It was Julian who put his elbow in and if Mark didn’t push back there was a chance they could have locked elbows and gone down… Mark just kept going and did everything he could to keep me out of trouble. I’m lucky to have a guy who will put himself on the line for me like that. He’s got incredible bike handling skills and it’s so nice to be able to follow his wheel from 50 kilometers to go and know that, at the finish, I’ll be put in a winning position.
“It was a hard first week in terms of getting the green jersey. I lost a lot of chances to gain points – mainly my own fault in the Arenberg stage, when I thought there was a big group ahead so I rolled in quite easy… but I really should have finished in with McEwen’s group and it might be a bit different. Then, the day after, I just didn’t have the legs and that put me even further behind.
“Now it’s about getting stage wins. If the green jersey comes, it comes but it’s a great battle. Thor and Alessandro are great sprinters and it’s actually fun to watch that battle unfold.”