Mark Cavendish – “If you win, you get confidence...”

“I came around the last corner and I just jumped and started my sprint. It’s different on the Champs-Elysées to every other sprint in the Tour de France where you kind of have save as much energy as possible because every day is so hard. In Paris you’ve got nothing to save your energy for so you just go balls-out to the line and that’s kind of what I did today.
“I’m disappointed this year not to win the green jersey. I set out to do so – it was a target for this year – but I had some bad luck in the first days and was out of the running but the team fought back, did our best and I lost it by 11 points. But we won five stages and we’ve got to be happy with this year’s Tour.
“In the first week there was nothing that could be done about the bad luck but the team rode incredibly strongly throughout the early days and I was the weak link at the end of it. But they never gave up faith and they continued to lead me out and it takes a special group of guys to do that. It’s not just the riders but the soigneurs, the management, the mechanics… everyone in the team. I’m so lucky to part of a group of people who give 100 per cent whatever the outcome. It’s frustrating not to have the best out come when they’ve also done such a good job. It was just a case of trying to make amends. Finally I did and we just got on a roll after that. Obviously if you win, you get confidence. If you get confidence, you win… it rolls like that and it came out to be a pretty successful Tour so I’m pretty happy.”