Mark Cavendish – “I'm just the guy who puts my hands in the air...”

“It was a hard stage actually, up and down all day long. It was incredible to win today, you’re not going to shut me up – I’ve got a lot of talking to do and I missed out on saying all of what I wanted to yesterday.
“It was harder than what most of us expected it to be. Special mention to a couple of guys on my team, Maxime Monfort and Bert Grabsch, we had to give Kanstantsin a rest today because he’s got work to do in the mountains for Mick Rogers. It was a long, hard slog for our guys but they rode incredibly well. They kept the gap down and then it was a case of everybody jumping in at the end.
“We knew it was going to happen, we knew it was going to be a tactical last climb but it played in our favor a little bit because it stopped us having to follow the chase at the end and we were able to just infiltrate into the lead-out. That was good, it was different to what we normally do.
“I just followed Mark [Renshaw] as usual and it was just a case of finishing off the incredible work that my team-mates did.
“We’re a team and I’m just a part of what’s functions like a great machine. Yeah, I’m just the guy who crosses the line with my hands in the air… but that’s the goal of cycling, to display the logo sponsors. And we’ve got to figure out the best way to do that and one way is to win bunch sprints. I’ve got to finish off the work that they do, and it’s an incredible machine to be part of.
“I don’t know where I stand with the green jersey. It’s still far off but I’ll just plug away. We’ll try and win stages and see what happens. After the mix-ups of the first few days, it put us on the back foot and we’ll do what we normally do and I’ll see how I go.”