At 34 and showing absolutely no signs of slowing down, road sprinter Mark Cavendish is well on his way to becoming the cycling world’s G.O.A.T. We find out what it takes to get McLaren to name a colour for him and how his association with IWC Portuguese Replica developed

Mark Cavendish

You’ve shown incredible resilience coming back from crashes and Epstein-Barr and the mental effects that being out of competition must bring. What are the most important things when it comes to recovery, both physical and mental?

The hardest thing has been dealing with the pressure from people that are ignorant to those physical and mental effects. Whether they be media, rivals, or others involved in the sport. At the end of the day, I’m human, not a machine. If a watch has a mechanical fault or loses a second, it can be fixed and immediately works like nothing had happened. A human body obviously needs time to get over the illness or injury, and time for rehabilitation.Replica watches Add to that the fact that top level sport is all about performing at the absolute peak of your capacity — a capacity level that will have taken a number of years to build up in order to even reach that point in the first place — it therefore means that coming back from zero, of course, can take a while.

I’m just incredibly lucky I’ve got a small amount of wonderful people around me: family, friends, sponsors, that have shown support and faith and reminded me of what I can achieve when I’m at my best.

Did your impressive result at the London Six Day at the end of 2019 help set you up for 2020?

Definitely riding the velodrome has helped me during my career. Although road and track cycling both fundamentally use two wheels, a chain and handlebars, they’re actually quite different sports. You could say one is like IndyCar racing and the other like Dakar Rally.

The high-intensity efforts on the track for sure help for my sprint speed,Breitling Chronomat Replica as does using different muscle groups from riding a single fixed gear. And riding in a tight bunch with no brakes helps me stay sharp mentally.

At 34 and four Tour de France wins away from matching Eddy Merckx’s record, what gives you the motivation every morning to wake up and train like a badass and focus on winning?

Simply, winning. Since I was a kid I had to try and win at everything, not just cycling. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t always win, but I always strived for it. It wasn’t good enough for me to be the best I could be; I had to be the best of everyone. As I’ve gotten older, the purpose of winning has changed, but the desire to win hasn’t. When I was young, it was always for me and how far I could go. Now it’s for my family, my children. How proud I can make them and how I can fundamentally give them the best life I can manage.