Mark Cavendish wins 34th stage, equals Eddy Merckxs’ tour stage win record

Mark Cavendish has won his 34th Tour stage with Stage 13 from Nimes to Carcassone on Friday 9 July at the 108th Tour de France.

Mark Cavendish has equaled Belgian rider Eddy Merckx’ tour stage win record winning his 34th stage on the Stage 13 from Nimes to Carcassone on Friday 9 July at the 108th Tour de France.

Cavendish wasn’t entirely sure he would return to the Tour de France but so far has won four stages – Stage 4, Stage 6, Stage 10 and now Stage 13.

He has been in the sport for 13 years.

https://twitter.com/LeTour/status/1413523212554678272

Mark Cavendish equals Eddy Merckx’ record.

It is now possible for Cavendish to set the new record and Stage 19 and the final stage in Paris seem the two best stages for him to do so.

Belgian rider Merckx won Tour de France five times and his last stage win was in 1975 before retiring.

Peter Sagan has won 12 stage wins at Grand Tours and Andre Greipel has won 11.

Cavendish seemed lost for words in his post race interview.

He crossed the stage finish line in a group sprint managing to get out of the middle of a group to get ahead of Michael Morkov, Jasper Philipsen, Ivan Garcia and Danny van Poppel.

Crashes cut riders out of Tour de France

The 219 kilometre stage was meant to be an easy sprinters’ stage but did see some drama as a crash occurred at the back of the peloton during a slight descent after passing the town of Minerve.

The front of the peloton had sped up to catch two breakaway riders Philippe Latour and Omer Goldstein while coming around curves on the descent.

Simon Yates crashed into a marker and went over the side of the slope causing others to crash into or get caught behind him.

Tim Declercq, Stefan Kueng, Soren Kragh Anderson and Nacer Bouhanni all went down as did Geraint Thomas, Roger Kluger and Lucas Hamilton.

Though he got up and tried to ride, Yates shortly officially abandoned the race with Lotto Soudal’s Kluger following suit.

Team Lotto Soudal has now lost half their team due to crashes or time cut offs.

Hamilton also had to leave the Tour after the crash becoming the 33rd person to abandon the Tour.

Tour de France standings after Stage 13

Tadej Pogacar retains the lead and the yellow jersey with no time taken on his rivals as Rigoberto Uran remains in second place, Jonas Vingegaard in third, Richard Carapaz in fourth and Ben O’Connor in fifth place.

Cavendish retains the green sprint points jersey with a lead of a hundred points over Michael Matthews.