Mark Cavendish has been getting a lot of press these past few days. And why wouldn’t he? After a disappointing season last year – including crashing out on stage 1 of the Tour de France – and Marcel Kittel dominating the kind of sprints Cav used to pick off at will, Cav is ready to take the fight to his rivals. And he’s not one to mince his words.

RCUK‘s chat with the Manx Missile threw up this quote.

Obviously the Tour de France is my biggest goal, it is every year and 2015 is no exception. I’d like to go and crush this year and be able to be successful with Etixx-QuickStep, as they were last year. I’d be super proud of that.

This is a big year for Cavendish, not least because his contract with Etixx-QuickStep runs out at the end of the 2015 season (although, let’s face it, he’s not going to be bereft of offers). His thoughts on possibly being the underdog in the sprint race with Kittel were clear in this interview in The Independent yesterday.

Who do I have to surprise? What’s the surprise? I’ve won 25 Tour de France stages and it’s not easy to win one in your career, let alone that number.

As for thoughts on retirement?

I hadn’t got a plan of when I was going to stop, but you know that [some day] you are going to stop. Now, though, I want to carry on for as long as possible.

While over at The Telegraph, Cav laments the fact that he’s going to turn, egad!, 30. He seems to think that this is old(!), there’s a joke about a mid-life crisis(!) and general comments about age.

Yeah, man. Look at me hair … grey hair! I will have a meltdown when I’m 30, a breakdown for sure. It will be a good thing or a bad thing, one or the other.

As I am a few years older (cough) than Cav, I can only shake my head and think, “Mark, if you think you feel old now, just you wait …”