Mark Cavendish Quotes

I'd love to be able to dominate cycling in general, not just one event.

There were something like 50 good, arduous climbs around Nice, solid inclines of ten miles or more. The trick was not to climb every once in awhile, but to climb repeatedly. I would do three different climbs in one day, over the course of a six- or seven-hour ride. A 12 mile climb took about an hour, so that tells you what my days were like.

I spent a couple of months just riding a bike doing my own training in the streets.

I've just been reading about cycling. Yeah, I'm not that great at it but I like the challenge of it.

Apparently I'm not a pro cyclist.

Thanks to the Tour de France, riding the Champs-Elysees has a great cycling history.

My dad was very into cycling and had lots of magazines around the house. So I knew about the best cyclists of that era: Arnaud Tournant, Laurent Gane. I watched a lot of the Tour de France and the Tour of Spain with him.

I just love riding my bike - no more so than at home in Cardiff and in South Wales on the roads where I started out, riding with my mates who I grew up with.

I can train harder and put myself through more punishing efforts now than I used to do, having done the Tour de France, and come off the road now.

At the Tour, you always have some fantastic days and some days where you hit the asphalt. Today was an asphalt day for me.

One thing that I like from a coach is that they don't put up too big a distance between the player and the trainer.

Every coach has his way of working.

The other sprinters are big and powerful but I have different strengths. The first thing is my leg speed. Most guys sprint at 120 revolutions per minute but I sprint at 130-140: think of it like a smaller engine revving faster. My body is shorter too, so I can lean over the handlebars for a more aerodynamic profile: again, think a smaller engine but in an F1 car.

I do jiu-jitsu my whole life, so why would I try to stand and bang with Mike Tyson? I'm going to learn boxing in six months because my opponent is good in boxing? That makes no sense.

A lot of the bikes are carbon wheels now, and you don't have as good a braking surface on a carbon wheel in the wet weather as you do on the old aluminium rims.

I started getting into decent food after I got a house in Tuscany, near the British cycling academy's training base. For a cyclist, the area is incredible, with the flats of the basin of Florence, the heights of the Apennines and the small climbs around Chianti.

I love cycling, I do it all the time.

I like to have plans in place so I know what I am doing and when. Take nutrition. When I am on the bike I will start off eating solid food like rice cakes made with pistachios or energy bars. Then as the race goes on, halfway though I will switch to gels as they get into your system more quickly and they are easier to palate when you're tired.

There is no pathway for female GB road cyclists, but at the same time, if you are wanting to be the best in the world, you have to forge your own pathway. It's not that things should be there on a plate for you. You have to work really hard, and that's what I've done, and I didn't let it stop me.

I started to run marathons and got into road biking in Los Angeles. It was a lot of fun and I managed to get into the shape of my life.

There's no big secret to training. But different body, different training. With me, you have to build muscles but also stay flexible and stay kind of soft, which I am naturally.

When you're a young pro from an undeveloped country in road cycling then you're on the back foot.

I am on my bike daily, and most of the locations, warehouses and specific residences from 'The Cut' were found while I was riding.

I'm 100% a sprinter... an old school one, not one of these new guys that can climb and sprint.

Track and road cycling are very different things. It is easy to look at them both as cycling but going from the road to the track is like asking Andy Murray to play squash: yes, it's a racket sport like tennis, but it's not the same.