Everyone's favourite angry Manxman gave a couple of interesting responses when being interviewed after his second consecutive failure to win Olympic cycling gold. One was a delightfully ranty answer to an unwelcome question about the after-effects of the Tour de France on his performance in London:
The other was a much more introspective, sombre sequence; according to Sad Cavendish (let's call him Mark Mark I), the failure of the British team was down to the lack of help they got from other national teams:
For those of you not familiar with the ins and outs of cycling road racing (so that's the more sane 98% of the population), a word about team tactics: in a stage race like the Tour de France, success on any one day is not a very big issue; overall time -- the General Classification -- is key, so there's little point in busting a gut to finish as high as possible on any one day. Bradley Wiggins, this year's TdF winner, only won two stages out of 20, but consistently finishing in the top 20 or so was enough for him to win by a margin of nearly 3-and-a-half minutes. Often, a breakaway of 6-10 riders will escape the pack (peloton) and one of those will win the stage; unless someone who's high up in the overall standings joins one of these breakaways, the rest of the riders -- who are divided into teams of 9 -- won't bother chasing them down.
In a one-off race, however (the Olympic road race, for instance), there are two major differences. First of all, overall position does matter (whatever your gym teacher told you -- try telling someone like Steve Redgrave that it's 'the taking part that counts'), and secondly, the teams are much smaller -- 4, rather than 9. So when a breakaway gets away from the field, reeling it in is both more important than in a longer race (as if the breakaway isn't caught, those in the peloton won't get medals) and more difficult (more riders on a team = more bodies to spare chasing down escapees = an easier ride for the team favourite [in France, Wiggins; in London, Cav]).
To return to the first interview, with Angry Cavendish (Mark Mark II), the interviewer may have had a point, although it might have been a bit galling for AC to hear that the media and supporters might have thought his month in France had a part to play in his failure. Perhaps the members of the British team, 3 of whom took part in this year's TdF (Cavendish, Wiggins, and David Millar), were still in 'stage race mode': when they realised that a breakaway was forming ahead of the peloton, maybe there was a collective assumption that this wasn't such a problem. 'Tour de France fatigue', in other words, might take various forms.
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