We sit down with cycling superstar Sir Mark Cavendish to discuss, retirement, accolades and what's next.
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00:00So Mark, it's been quite a year to cap a truly, I'm going to say, truly remarkable career.
00:06Before we get into the cycling, let's talk through the emotions when you found out you were going to be made a Knight of the Realm.
00:13It was really nice, it was quite emotional actually.
00:19You know in my sport, like any sports person, you strive for results.
00:25And you know a result is a thing you achieve, and you know if you put the work in you get that.
00:31It's a recognition, and that's something pretty special.
00:37Because you don't often think about, you think how you can inspire, and you think about how you are with fans, how you are with kids.
00:47You never think of any recognition, but you do it for why you do it.
00:55When I found out, I was touched.
01:00It was really nice, I don't sound like a Knight, but it was very, very nice.
01:10Have you bought yourself a big sword, or maybe a nice cape?
01:17I'll have to get fitted for a suit, and I'm dead awkward in a collar.
01:22I'm so awkward in a collar, so it's going to be the collar that's going to be the most nerve-wracking thing,
01:28rather than meeting a member of the Royal Family I guess.
01:32And I'm guessing they all seem to be big sports fans, so that'll probably be quite a big deal for them as well.
01:37It's wonderful, obviously I had a letter from His Majesty when the Knight was appointed,
01:46and then I also had a letter from Her Majesty Princess Anne, it was very nice.
01:53I've met Prince Harry a couple of times working with Help For Heroes,
01:58and he was at the start of the Tour de France when we were in Yorkshire.
02:02They're big into sports, it's really nice.
02:05Something I never said if I ever got the chance to interview you,
02:08I was going to ask you about your freedom of the Borough of Douglas you got in 2008.
02:12So I wanted to know, do you get any perks for that? Can you park anywhere you want?
02:18I thought you could park wherever you want.
02:21You've booked parking tickets to say you can't now?
02:24Yeah, my tyre's been cold so I don't know if I can park it right now.
02:28I think you can park in the Borough car park, but I don't.
02:33No sheep you can drive through Strand Street?
02:35Yeah, I think that's one of them, isn't it?
02:37I'm not sure, I'm asking. I didn't know you got a starter pack.
02:40You can walk your sheep down Strand Street.
02:44I've got five kids, so walking them down Strand Street is like walking a herd of sheep anyway.
02:52Again, it's the honour of it. I'll always pay when the parking machine's working.
02:59I'll always pay for my parking anyway.
03:02I just appreciate that I'm a freeman of the capital city of this island.
03:09It's a city now, Douglas, isn't it?
03:11It is, yeah.
03:13I think that might have been something to do with you because it was one of the most recent ones,
03:17so your achievements may have been a weight to that.
03:20I'll take credit for a lot of things, but not that much.
03:23Right, we should talk about cycling.
03:27Back in the start of the year, was it a straightforward decision to say,
03:31I'm going to give it one last crack at the Tour, or was there a lot of mixed emotions there?
03:36Yeah, I was retired. That was it.
03:39I'd announced my retirement in May, and that was my last Tour de France.
03:47It didn't end how I wanted it to end, but that's life as a sport.
03:52I've had good luck in my career, so you have bad luck as well.
03:56It just balances itself out, and that's how I saw it.
03:59I've had good times, and sometimes things just don't go your way.
04:04So that was it. I was done.
04:07As soon as I got back from the hospital, my team boss was like, carry on.
04:10My wife was like, carry on. But I really didn't want to.
04:13I knew what I wanted to do. I knew that that was going to be the last Tour.
04:18I put everything I had into doing it.
04:22My job's hard.
04:26I'm very fortunate to ride my bike for a living, and there's some great perks to doing it,
04:32but it's not an easy life.
04:35I can't complain. There's people in worse situations than I am, but it's not easy.
04:40I've been doing it for 20 years. It was time.
04:44I actually came to the kids. They were like, what do you mean you're not going to be a bike rider?
04:50I said, yeah, it's like that.
04:53What do you mean?
04:56Pete was like, Dad, you'll carry on. I said, I'm not.
04:59I said, actually, I'll ask you guys. I want to be with you, so I want to spend more time with you.
05:04I was like, so what should I do? Should I do another year or what?
05:09They all unanimously said yes, so that was the decision made for me, really.
05:15You said it was hard. Did you feel added pressure this year when you made that decision to come back?
05:23Everyone was talking about the record.
05:26No, absolutely no added pressure. I've never known anything except pressure.
05:31You're in a good position when you're expected to win. My whole career I've been expected to win.
05:35It means I've done something right.
05:39The only pressure you should really pay attention to is the pressure you put on yourself.
05:45I know what I can control.
05:50Everything else is expectation. It's out of my control.
05:58If I put the work in, I had the right team around me and the right equipment.
06:09Light-wise, light-wise, everything I could control.
06:12If I could do the best I could do, I knew I'd be in the best shot of winning.
06:17Fortunately, I had all those things.
06:20A year's not too long to focus on one thing.
06:26You need a goal to get out of bed every morning.
06:29An Olympic cycle is four years. That can seem a long way.
06:33A year, you can do it. Ultimately, I enjoyed it.
06:36I was with a great group of lads on my team.
06:40Brilliant, like a family people I've raced with before.
06:45Adam Bossie was a champion as well. He was Olympic champion in London in 2012.
06:51He was 40 years old. He understands what it's like.
06:54His words were always like, we know if you do the work, that's all we can ask of you.
06:59You try your best.
07:02I know if I try my best, I should be successful.
07:06It's just a case of doing what I can control, which is trying my best.
07:10I'm going to ask you a good question now.
07:12When you got to the end of that stage in St. Volbas,
07:15I've been trying to get my French pronunciation correct all day.
07:19I knew I would get it wrong.
07:21I remember watching the television coverage straight after.
07:24You seemed almost shocked.
07:28Now you've had a couple of months to reflect.
07:31What are your emotions about that day? Are you still incredibly proud?
07:35In all honesty, it's the same as every other time I've won at the Tour.
07:40Because my life has been exactly like it has been after every Tour de France.
07:46I always take a couple of weeks off with my family, try and regroup, relax a little bit.
07:52You're in this high-intensity bubble for not just the three weeks of the Tour,
07:57but the months leading up to it as well.
07:59Just to unwind for a few weeks is important for the rest of the year.
08:04Then you build up for the rest of the year now.
08:09It's not been any different, really.
08:11It's been a little bit busier with things that have come off the back of winning the 35th win.
08:23In terms of the professional side of it, that still continues.
08:29You keep just focusing on that and the next step.
08:32There'll be a lot of time to look back.
08:34Of course, I'm proud.
08:36I'm proud of the journey we made the last year together.
08:40My team are starting in Kazakhstan, me and my family.
08:47The support has lived the journey with me.
08:50It's been quite a nice story to build up.
08:56I'm honoured to have been the main character of that.
09:02There's a lot of people who've worked as hard, if not harder, than I have.
09:07Hopefully, they're relaxing too.
09:09You talk about the story, the journey.
09:11It's been, as you said earlier, nearly 20 years.
09:14Man and boy, we're saying.
09:16What do you put down to your longevity?
09:20It's very rare in any sport, let alone professional cycling,
09:23that someone has a career that long and that successful.
09:28When I was 14 years old, I used to finish school on a Friday
09:35and ride my bike down to the ferry with a duffel bag on my back,
09:41like a rucksack, and get that ferry over to compete in the UK.
09:45Get a train, whatever, in the night time.
09:47Ready for the weekend and get the midnight ferry back on a Sunday
09:50and go to school then on a Monday.
09:53We're well-supported here.
09:55We have the NSE, there's a good community of cyclists here.
10:02But you're still at a disadvantage.
10:07It was graft. It was graft.
10:14But you do it.
10:17As I was growing up, I was not as really strong as anyone else
10:22and I learned to race.
10:24If they pushed hard on a hill, I'd be dropped.
10:27But again, it was graft.
10:29Any one of these things are kind of an excuse to get out.
10:34It's a good thing.
10:36It's a good thing.
10:38It's a good thing.
10:40It's a good thing.
10:43It's kind of an excuse to get out.
10:48You don't have an excuse to get out.
10:51You just work to what you can do.
10:54That's all I've known, really.
10:57Just work the hardest you can do.
11:02And know what you can do and don't let other people say what you can do.
11:07I'm able to do that more because I love it.
11:11I love riding my bike.
11:13I like riding my bike with the kids.
11:15I like riding my bike as a mode of transport.
11:17I like riding out with my friends.
11:19I like racing.
11:21I get to do that for a job, which makes it easier.
11:27That moment to give up is completely heightened,
11:30I think, from my roots here, for sure.
11:33You just don't give up.
11:35In the past, you've mentioned the terrain of this place
11:38also has been a contributing factor.
11:40The fact that anyone that follows you on Strava or whatever,
11:43the amazing routes you do, it's a great training place, isn't it?
11:48And after you, we've also produced other professionals as well.
11:51We must be doing something right with the geography of the place, isn't it?
11:54Yeah.
11:56It's never boring here.
11:59You're always up and down.
12:02And if you don't know any different, it instills something into you.
12:06And the roads are hard.
12:08They're heavy roads to ride on.
12:11They're roads that are designed so that the water doesn't stay
12:16and make them slippy, you know, for obvious reasons.
12:19So you kind of stick to them.
12:22And then for those obvious reasons, which is the weather,
12:27you kind of get a bit hardy with it, you know.
12:32Not like going, oh, macho, macho, but the rain doesn't bother you
12:36because it rains here a lot, you know.
12:40And like I said before, the community here, bike riding community,
12:44there's always a group.
12:46As long as I've known, there's a group out that meets the same time every day.
12:49At the NSC.
12:50At the NSC, yeah.
12:52And it's beautiful.
12:54Like we've got a beautiful day today.
12:56And on a day like today, the scenery,
12:59doesn't matter how many times you've seen it, you're going to enjoy it.
13:02So I still say I've been everywhere in the world to ride my bike,
13:05and this is still my favourite place and always will be.
13:08We're looking ahead to the future.
13:10I know you've probably got lots of irons in the fire and stuff,
13:13but have you got a plan?
13:15You know, do you want to maybe go into Punditry,
13:18maybe team up with another Laxey resident and do a podcast?
13:22Or go back to, was it the 2014 Commonwealth Games
13:25when you did the sportive director role for the games team?
13:29Is that something that maybe interests you?
13:31Yeah, like for the moment, I know what I will do in the future.
13:36I don't know what I'm doing short term.
13:40Like I carried on over the year, maybe I'd do more.
13:44I don't know.
13:47But yeah, my future is, like I like management, I like business,
13:54I like working with a team, you know, and that's always what I thought I'd do.
14:02I've always been able to get a group of people working well together.
14:07That was always, I knew that I could do that,
14:15and I'm very fortunate I had the best people around me
14:18that I could kind of try and get the best from as well.
14:22And I get a buzz out of everything from a kid learning to ride a balance bike
14:30up to helping a pro go faster up a hill.
14:37I think I feel success in other people as much as I do in myself, you know.
14:44So I think the natural step is into management,
14:48whether it be in cycling or out of cycling.
14:50I don't know, but obviously cycling I know, so that would be an easy choice.
14:56But planetary, things like that.
15:01I love watching cycling, but yeah, I'm actually quite shy, I guess.
15:10Do you know what I mean?
15:12Of course, being Mark Cavendish has opened a lot of doors,
15:18but I'm quite happy not to be in the limelight, really.
15:26Finally, the Isle of Man looks nailed on to be hosting the Isle of Games in 2029.
15:32Oh, really? That's the first time I've heard that.
15:34Oh, right. So my question is, could there be a last, last dance?
15:38No, no, no. How old will I be in 2029?
15:40In 25 years, mate.
15:4144.
15:4244 in your prime.
15:43Oh, maybe. Like Andrew Roach has still got, he's nearly 70.
15:49Elliot as well.
15:50Elliot as well.
15:51Get the band back together.
15:53I don't know. Look, there's always so many talented, of every age group,
16:00talented vets, talented juniors, talented kids.
16:04It's always like there's so much talent in all sports,
16:08especially in cycling over here, that there's always someone like, yeah.
16:14There's not enough.
16:18There'll be someone better than me for sure, do you know?
16:21I'll come and watch.
16:23Mark, thanks for your time.
16:25Great.