Really analysing the course and the weather conditions helps. That’s something that really helped me with my win in China [first professional win at the Tour of Chongming Island last year].
I was really focussing on where the wind was coming – it was a headwind, so I knew I had to leave the sprint as late as possible and a lot of the girls went too early.
![](https://storage.googleapis.com/fm-coresites-assets/rcuk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/1-mark-cavendish-giro-620x413.jpg)
Obviously it’s really hard to sprint for a long time into the wind so I just sheltered for as long as possible and just sprinted as late as I could.
I think conditions are really important to concentrate on during the sprint and just to help in knowing where you should start the sprint.