Mark Cavendish has told Cycling Weekly that he can still win big races in 2015 and he has spoken about the effect his crash on the opening stage of the Tour de France has had on his 2015 season.

“I had to start earlier,” he says. “After the enforced break in July, I didn’t really need a good three or four weeks off in October and November, so I just started training pretty much after the World Championships road race ended and that was about it. I did pretty much a similar thing.”

His DS at Etixx-Quick Step, Brian Holm, says that Cavendish has even more competition now than he had back in 2009 when he first really rose to prominence and stamped his authority over the Tour’s sprints. This is something Cavendish agrees with.

“I just think in general the challenge is bigger,” says Holm. “Five years ago with HTC he basically just smoked them. It’s a bit more difficult now than when we were only really battling with Tyler Farrar and [José Joaquín] Rojas — now Kittel has a good lead-out train, André Greipel with a good lead-out train, Alexander Kristoff, he’s just good, he can basically do it on his own.”

“It is harder now with the amount of sprint teams that are out there,” Cav says. “There’s so many lead-out trains now and that makes it harder.”

Brian Holm says Rigoberto Uran may ride the Giro-Tour double but says there is no ay to say that he will get in Cavendish’s way and impact him going for the sprint wins.

“We’ve got Mark Renshaw and we’d probably have one or two others that can do it [lead out] but we’d never end up with eight anyway. Let’s see how he [Uran] survives the Giro first and then talk full GC ambitions. I could imagine he’ll go full-on for GC in the Giro, and then start the Tour and take it step by step.”

Holm says that Cavendish can match Kittel and believes the Manx Missile is back to his best years, like he was at HTC-Highroad.

“Kittel is good. In a pure clean sprint he’s bloody fast, we have to admit that. But now Cav’s fast like he was before, he’s probably pulling the same watts as he was before.”

Despite being in contract year, Cavendish has taken every opportunity possible to reiterate his desire to sign a new deal with his current team.

“Every team I’ve ever been with has been good in its own way. But I love it here,” he says. “I’m not happy to leave home, but it’s a pleasure to race with the riders, to spend days with the staff.”

“The fact is it’s not a team built round me. It’s like HTC was — we go out and want to win, just want to race together and win.”