Team Sky can win Tour de France green and yellow jerseys, says Mark Cavendish - Sport - Evening Standard
       

Team Sky can win Tour de France green and yellow jerseys, says Mark Cavendish

Mark Cavendish believes Team Sky have the wherewithal to win both the green and yellow jerseys at the Tour de France.

The 26-year-old recently joined the British team from HTC-Highroad, where he won the Tour's green jersey last year.

The move to Team Sky sees Cavendish link up with several former team-mates and friends, including three-time Olympic gold medallist Bradley Wiggins.

There have been suggestions the team will struggle to maintain Cavendish's attempt to retain the green jersey as well as Wiggins' yellow jersey hopes, although the former yesterday dismissed such suggestions.

"I would not be here if I did not think it was possible," he said of the feat not achieved since 1996.

"We have some of the best bike riders in the world at Sky and definitely the best in the world for doing that double-ended approach.

"For me it is fine. I will go in and make sure I am in the best condition I can be in and have confidence in my team-mates that we can all work together and be successful.

"I am not in this to be successful myself. I am not in this to have guys helping me to achieve everything I want.

"I am here to be part of something successful. At HTC if I was riding the Tour de France and the Tour of Austria was on at the same time, it was as important to me that somebody was winning a stage there while I was in France.

"I was part of something successful and that was always important. It is definitely possible for me to win the green jersey and a British rider to win the yellow jersey in the same Tour de France at Team Sky."

This year is huge for British cycling, with the final stage of the Tour de France just days before the London 2012 road race.

Cavendish, who won the Olympic test event last August, is eyeing a tilt at glory in both and is confident of succeeding.

"It is going to be a massive July," he said. "I am motivated for the Tour de France and the Olympics, but both for completely separate reasons.

"As a professional bike rider and contracted athlete with sponsors to please and money to earn, the Tour de France is the biggest thing I can do.

"The Tour de France is the big stage in cycling and one the biggest shows on the planet.

"It is important to be successful there but, in terms of being a British athlete with the Olympics meaning so much to a British person, to pull on that national jersey and do something to represent your country at your home Games makes it equally big, if not bigger, but just on a different level.

"I want to do both, I am ambitious to do both and I think it is very, very doable. That is why we are aiming to achieve both a successful Tour de France and an Olympics."

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