Peta Cavendish: Mark’s Tour de France Record Break Was ‘Perfect’

Peta Cavendish did not actually witness her husband Mark’s record-breaking 35th career Tour de France stage win at the exact moment it happened, but she had a premonition all day that it was coming.

Peta and their children were stationed just beyond the finish line of stage five in Saint-Vulbas. They watched on a TV screen, experiencing a slight delay, so by the time they saw the sprint unfold, Mark already had his arms aloft in celebration.

“I find it very stressful watching a sprint,” Peta told the PA news agency. “It’s not something I’ve ever liked. I’m used to it now, but not seeing the last 100 meters was probably for the best because I don’t know if my heart could have taken it.”

She admitted, “We’d had a feeling all day. There’s only a few times I can say I’ve had that feeling from the beginning of the day to the end.”

Mark Cavendish, 39, stood alone in Tour history a year after crashing out of what was supposed to be his final Tour, following years marked by illness, injury, and depression.

“I was so relieved,” Peta remarked. “Not because we had the record. Everything that everybody had worked for had come together… There were always going to be more opportunities, but there was relief it was done.”

She added, “As much as you can enjoy the suffering of the next two-and-a-half weeks, he could try to enjoy his last Tour de France knowing he’d achieved what he set out to achieve.”

The planning for this moment began almost immediately after Mark broke his collarbone on stage eight of last year’s Tour. Peta drove 120 miles to see him in the hospital.

“He wasn’t great, but better than I thought he was going to be,” she recalled. “He was like, ‘What do I do now?’ I looked at him and said, ‘I think we know what we do now’. He just said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’”

Even Alexander Vinokourov, Astana-Qazaqstan’s boss, provided clear guidance.

“‘Vino’ was like, ‘We go again’,” Peta said. “Mark was still saying, ‘I don’t know,’ but I told him, ‘I don’t know why we’re pretending this isn’t going to happen.’”

For Peta and their five children, this meant another season with Mark on the road; he’s been home for just three weeks this year.

“I honestly don’t remember much different,” Peta explained. “I love Mark, I would much prefer being with him all the time, but I’m also quite independent. I’ve got like 6,000 children, so I’m never sitting here twiddling my thumbs!”

She continued, “My big thing is, I know it’s not forever… It’s hard for the kids, but they’ve never known anything different. Apart from the youngest, she’s only two, they understand. They see him on TV and can make sense of where he is and what he’s doing.”

When Cavendish won four stages of the 2016 Tour to reach 30, it appeared only a matter of time before he broke Eddy Merckx’s long-standing record of 34.

But contracting the Epstein-Barr virus led to a series of setbacks, culminating in a diagnosis of depression.

In an incredible comeback, he won four stages in 2021 but was denied the Hollywood ending of hitting 35 in Paris.

Not selected in 2022 and crashing out in 2023, it seemed the chance might have passed. But Saint-Vulbas delivered the final twist in this incredible story.

“I said to Mark, ‘I know it would have been easier if you’d won on the Champs-Elysees in 2021; it would have been a lovely fairytale, but these last two years have been pretty exciting,’” Peta said.

“If you were making a film, you’d put these two years in. I think it’s perfect for who Mark is and what he’s done in the sport.”

“That never-say-die attitude has got him where he is, so to bookend his career with that mentality is perfect.”