Love him or hate him, Mark Cavendish leaves nothing to the imagination. The Omega Pharma-Quickstep sprinter is not one to hide his feelings.
And in a sporting world filled with cliché and the old ‘taking it one week at a time’ sound bite, his colourful character shines through like a beacon.
That beacon may not always be a marker of safety like its maritime equivalent, but it is much more interesting than the flashing green and red lights out in the bay.
As quick as he is to criticise if things don’t go his way, a day later he can be singing the praises of his teammates as a humble victor.
He is a contradiction, a polarising force, a man with the uncanny ability to both thrill and disgust at the same time.
He is courageous. Any rider who can fight and jostle for position in the helter-skelter of a 70kph sprint has guts beyond measure.
Not everyone can do it. Even big Tom Boonen speaks of how fear began to get the better of him in bunch finishes.
But Cavendish does it day after day, week after week, each time as fearlessly as the last.
He knows the dangers, he knows what road rash tastes like, and yet he saddles up again and again searching for that next, adrenalin-pumping rush of danger that hopefully ends in victory and not tumbling across the road surface.
He knows that erratic moves in the finale of a sprint can be catastrophic.
He has been critical of erratic riders in the past as well as being criticised for being an erratic, reckless rider himself, a persona that he obviously hates.
Which is why it is hard to fathom his actions at the end of the stage ten sprint into Saint-Malo that brought down Argos-Shimano’s Tom Veelers.
In the closing stages of that sprint Cavendish looked to be in near perfect position.
He was tucked in behind Veelers, almost invisible, sheltering from the wind and readying himself for the burst of power that would hopefully see him surge across the line in first place.
But Veelers was finished. Before the final sweeping curve to the finish line Veelers stopped pedalling.
Whether his energy was done or he had a mechanical or he actually realised that he was leading Cavendish out to the disadvantage of his team mate Marcel Kittel, we will probably never truthfully know.
It doesn’t really matter though, because by this stage Veelers wasn’t actually watching where he was going. His head was down, perhaps looking at a skipping chain, but whatever the reason, he wavered from his line.
Cavendish, already annoyed at being baulked and seeing his chance of victory evaporating, jumped from the saddle and looked to come around the Dutchman. He had plenty of room.
The road did veer left ahead of him but he was in no danger of being put into the barriers, as he later stated.
Swooping back in on Veelers as he whooshed past was both deliberate and unnecessary. While Cavendish would not have wanted Veelers to crash, he certainly wanted to give him a bump on the way through.
It was a spur of the moment act designed at asserting his authority and releasing some anger.
It was a mind snap similar to that of a footballer lashing out at an opponent in a moment of rage.
Cavendish is a passionate sports person in an intoxicating, competitive environment. Things will happen in the heat of the moment. Veelers was not completely blame free.
Whether his obstruction of Cavendish was deliberate or not, he also needs to have more awareness of what is going on around him.
A good start for him would be to continue to watch where he is going.
The business end of a bunch sprint is a small place. A good position at the business end of a bunch sprint is even smaller and there are never enough good positions to go around.
So while the area the riders are fighting for is small, their egos are big and their competitive spirit even bigger again.
Tempers will fray and preventable accidents will occur. It doesn’t make it right but it is the truth.
It is a miracle that it doesn’t happen more often.
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