Mark Cavendish has explained what caused him to lose his temper and shout at a team mechanic before yesterday's Tour de France stage.
The British sprinter, winner of four stages in this year’s Tour, screamed at the man and angrily slammed his bike into the ground before storming back to the team bus as shocked fans looked on.
He later explained that he had 'some problems' with the bike before the stage and 'he wanted his bike to be perfect'.
In a video of the incident, he appears to shout at the mechanic, telling him to 'sort it out', before walking away at the start of stage 19 in Mourenx yesterday.
Posting on Instagram, the 36-year-old didn't exactly apologise for the incident but appeared to regret the public nature of his outburst.
He said: “Many of you will have seen the video from the start of today’s stage.
“During a day of the Tour de France, as riders we are put in a perilous situation and I wanted my bike to be perfect, in order to help me stay safe. My bike had some problems when I got on it this morning.
"Despite this, I should not have reacted in the way that I did and not so publicly.
“I've been extremely close friends with my mechanics for over a decade and they’ve worked tirelessly to ensure I’ve always been safe and successful. Although they know how short I can be when I'm stressed, no-one, especially those you care about, deserve to have a voice raised to them.
“Truly, one of the biggest factors of the success of Deceuninck-QuickStep is that we are a family, and we love and care for each other, and conversations should be kept within that family.”
Cavendish had hoped to compete for a 35th stage win during the stage, but a breakaway of 20 riders left the peloton well behind.
Cavendish will get another chance in Sunday's final stage, which finishes on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
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32 comments
Imagine if he took his bike to Halfords to be fixed...
I read the article before I watched the video clip, and it wasn't as bad as I'd been expecting...
(That being said, it did look a bit "toys? Check; pram? check"...)
"I WANT MY FREAKING RIM BRAKE BIKE ARRRGGGG!!!!"
I disagree with Cavendish over one point; there are loads of people who thoroughly deserve being subjected to a raised voice. And probably more too.
The woman who waits for five minutes in the Aldi queue and then, when it's time to pay, can't find her purse. She's one.
The driver who squeezes past me in traffic only to brake immediately as cars grind to a halt and then has to watch me filter past him (it's always a him) for the third time. He's another.
Men usually carry their wallets in their jeans, women in their handbags. No-one in the queue carries their wallet in their hand whilst they are unpacking/packing. Getting wallet from jeans front pocket is much simpler than retrieving from a handbag full of essentials that men generally don't use/need. Why don't women put purses in their jeans pocket? Because women's jeans are manufactured with stupidly shallow front pockets (hence why you often see women with mobile phones in their back pocket). Back pockets are not a safe place against pickpockets.
The first thing I do when approaching a checkout is scan my loyalty card and then rest my debit card in the reader, then when it comes to pay all I have to do it push the card home.
You pay by chip and pin ? Wow.
Me too.
Me three.
Of course not. I pay with money. In this day and age it's much less likely to be stolen and nobody can prove I was at the scene of the crime.
I don't own a mobile 'phone.
Not meaning to be rude, but are you really old?
No - I just don't need a 'phone when I have a Notebook that is far easier to use than a device with a tiny keyboard and screen. I also have a proper camera and proper GPS devices. I do have a landline though, a 160 GB i-pod and several DAB+ radios. I prefer the proper tool for the job, not something that does lots of things poorly. Heck, half the time they don't even work as a telephone, never mind anything else!
Lol proper GPS devices.
Exactly how do you think GPS works?
Lots of things poorly simply shows you have no idea about current or recent phones.
I listen to enough radio phone -ins to know how patchy and unreliable they are and it annoys me when the presenter always says that they will try to get you back on a better line, when they really mean a better SIGNAL. I have a Garmin Nuvicam for the car, a Garmin Edge 1000 for the bikes, a Garmin Nuvi 3790T for city walking and a Garmin Nuvi 500 for OS maps.
That's a no then.
How does your 320 x 240 pixels display cope with 1:10000 maps and what are 1:25000 maps like. How often do you get a map update ?
I get about three full free European map updates per year for the three Garmins, except for the Nuvi 550 which is on a chip.
5th gen Ipod Classics with Wolfson DAC rock. The best phone I had for music was an LG G5 with a modular B&O DAC add on (the hifi plus) but generally phones aren't as good as dedicated players. Proper cameras also rock. Even my old 1d Mark II from my motorsport media days takes a better pic than all phone cameras. Then again the expensive lenses also help.
Indeed - proper tools for the job, not a Jack of all trades. My 7 '' screen Garmin Nuvicam is the pinnacle of car GPS/dashcams as well.
Yep, I prefer a proper keyboard to a touch-screen, but a mobile phone is a lot more convenient to slip in a pocket and there's the benefit of it being always on.
Although proper cameras will take much better photos, there's the saying that the best camera is the one that's with you.
I've also got a landline, but that seems to be only used by family and nuisance callers - I should probably get rid of it, but it's included in my Virgin Media package.
My wife has a mobile and we got texts for the jabs on it, that's about it. She gets our daughters to ring our landline for chats and it doesn't cost us anything. That said, my Plusnet broadband/landline still clocks up £55 per month.
So you also asked for a specific type of debit card.
You must be a technophobe or very old.
Chip and Pin is still there as contactless is £45 tops so then you use the other for costs more then that. So no special card needed.
Then all their transactions must be over 45 which sounds rather unlikely.
In a supermarket, probably (on the mention of the loyalty card).
Technophobe? I had a GPS in 1997 and was on the pre- Internet in 1981 (USENET).
with a sharp thrust of the hips, efficiently leaving the hands free to finish off the packing.
Man put on sex offenders register for trying to have sex with Lidl Card machine.
In his defence he stated "The shopping was more expensive than I thought, so I was planning on returning to pay for it later but thought that I'd better leave a small deposit"
He hasn't got a mobile, so I doubt he's got a hands free
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