Cavendish Wins in Hungary

Mark Cavendish won Stage 2 of the Tour of Hungary on Thursday 9th May 2024.

It’s a positive sign that his preparations for the Tour de France are going well, and that Astana’s lead-out train is beginning to work effectively.

Stage 2 Tour of Hungary Sprint

Cavendish’s Stage 2 win was analysed by Lanterne Rouge.

The Lanterne Rouge video highlights an incident in the run-in towards the line of barging between Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco Allula) and Sam Welsford (Bora Hansgrohe). Welsford’s wheel broke when it hit the feet of one of the barriers, and Groenewegen was later given a 10s penalty.

Cavendish’s lead-out train was Gleb Syritsa, Cees Bol and Michael Morkov.

They placed Cavendish well on the slightly uphill finish, and the Manxman sprinted to the line ahead of Groenewegen.

Cavendish’s Reaction

As is often the case, Cavendish was happy to give an in-depth analysis of how he and his team won the race.

‘Yesterday, we didn’t quite hit the lead-out properly. Like, it was super good, everyone committed 100% yesterday, we were just a bit eager, a bit too soon, and so we talked and talked about that to rectify it today.

It was a completely different finish today – obviously it was not a big boulevard, and [it had] some corners to make it technical. We executed it exactly how we wanted to do. I was so happy.

We had Yevgeniy Gidich looking after us the whole day so we didn’t take any wind. He did the same yesterday, he pulled. Then Michele Gazzoli on the climb, keeping us there on the climb, Gleb Syritsa, big Gleb keeping us completely sheltered. I had it so easy until the last kilometres.

And then Cees and Morky were into the last kilometre, use the other teams and use the speed we have to get as close as we can to the line because it was slightly uphill, quite a bit uphill actually without speed, you wanted to get close, close, it was always going to be a shorter sprint than normal.

And we nailed it exactly how we wanted to, I’m so happy with that. Coming here after a good training block with a team, with a group that predominantly will go to the Tour de France.

That was very good, very happy’.

mark cavendish

Cavendish will be aiming for at least one stage win at the 2024 Tour de France.

Thbau Nys (Lidl Trek) won the overall at the Tour of Hungary ahead of Emanuel Buchmann (Bora) and Wout Poels (Bahrain Victorious).