Mark Cavendish: 'I can excel at Tour de France despite troubles'

Mark Cavendish insists he remains on track for the Tour de France and an attempt to wear the green jersey of points winner. The 25-year-old has won three times this year, compared with 14 at the equivalent stage of last season, although that statistic only hints at the difficulties he has encountered in recent months, from complications after dental surgery, to controversial victory gestures and, last week, a mass pile-up for which he was widely blamed . The crash, in the final metres of stage four of the Tour de Suisse, came after Cavendish collided with Heinrich Haussler in the finishing straight. It was followed the next day by a reported protest against the British rider's "lack of respect". "It wasn't the whole peloton," Cavendish said. "It was [Haussler's] Cervélo [team] and about three other riders who said, 'We want to protest, and we're not going to start the race until Cavendish goes home.' The rest of the peloton said, 'You're being stupid, we're going to race.' And so Cervélo and the guys who wanted to protest changed their tune and said they protested for two minutes." Cavendish was equally keen to set the record straight on the suggestion that he was solely to blame for the collision. "I altered my line but I didn't switch," he said. "I'm not going to say I was sprinting in a straight line or that I was faultless, but I don't believe I was the only one at fault. But you know, crashes happen in sprinting. I got up, crossed the line and went straight back to my bus. I'm just glad I wasn't injured, and I'm sorry for the people who were." Earlier in the season Cavendish was withdrawn from the Tour de Romandie by his team, HTC-Columbia, after making a two-fingered victory celebration. He offered a novel explanation for that. "It's an insult but it wasn't meant to be vulgar," Cavendish said. "The two-fingered salute comes from Agincourt, when they caught the archers and cut their two fingers off. It was intended to say: you can attack me, but I've still got my fingers. That's what I meant, anyway." As for the Tour, which begins on 3 July, Cavendish said he has identified "six probable and nine possible" stages that will finish in the kind of bunch sprint that he has dominated for the past two seasons, winning four stages in 2008 and six last year. He insists he is unconcerned by his lack of wins. "I said in January I wasn't going to do events where I'd win all the time. I was going to do events that would get me ready for the Tour." The setbacks, he added, are par for the course. "You've just got to take it on the chin. Negative things will always come when you're successful, but I'm sticking to my goal to be successful at the Tour de France and world championships. I think my results there will speak for themselves."