Dubai: Great Britain’s Mark Cavendish looked forward towards building on his strong early start after winning the second edition of the Dubai Tour on Saturday.
Heavily tipped to come out a winner following triumph on the opening two stages on Wednesday and Thursday, Cavendish ended in the third bunch on the gruelling 205km third stage atop the Hatta Dam on Friday. However, that did not deter the British cyclist from launcing an all-out assault for final honours in Saturday’s final stage.
Cavendish finished six seconds clear of Team Sky’s Elia Viviani who was celebrating his 26th birthday, while Movistar Team’s Juan Jose Valle followed in third place ten seconds away from the champion.
Cavendish was pleased with the way his team backed him till the end. “I am super happy to win as this is a super special race for me. While winning is not exactly a new experience for me, what makes it more special is the way in which my team controlled over the four days till the end. This is more than I could have hoped for,” he said.
“To be fair, I really did not do anything much. It was the team and today we stand on the podium to celebrate a team effort,” Cavendish added. Shaikh Mansour Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum was joined by Mattar Al Tayer, Vice Chairman, Dubai Sports Council (DSC) and Saeed Hareb, General Secretary, DSC at the trophy presentation.
The key factor behind Cavendish’s success is a gruelling training session he went through during the winter break, something that could possibly work in his favour as the season progresses. “I’ve worked hard and the results have been showing. It’s always nice to win and I am super happy with my form going into the next part of the season,” he said.
Cavendish will now get a few days off before next Saturday’s [February 14] Vuelta Ciclista a Murcia, followed by the Clasica de Almeria on Sunday. He will then proceed to the Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne race on March 1 before turning his attention to preparing for the next big one – the Milano-San Remo race.
Asked what he planned to do with the Dubai Tour trophy, Cavendish said that he would rather leave the specially-designed Pininfarina ‘Circle of Stars’ trophy at the team’s service stream [main workshop] museum in the Flanders region of Belgium. Cavendish has three homes – one on the Isle of Man, one in Essex and a training base in the Tuscany region of Italy. “It’s a beautiful trophy and it is pretty special to the team, so I would rather have it sit there [museum],” he said.
Action will now shift to the 14th edition of the Tour of Qatar, to be held over six stages from February 8-13.
