Mark Cavendish pays tribute to team after Tour de France points win

'I was really, really low during stages in the Massif Central'
It was the team that 'got me through this Tour'
Le Tour de France 2011 - Stage Twenty One
An emotional Mark Cavendish kisses his green jersey on the podium in Paris. Photograph: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

Mark Cavendish won the final sprint of the Tour de France for the third year in a row on Sunday, and this time the victory seemed so easy, so undramatic, so textbook, that you had to look hard to make sure the competition were really trying.

When Matt Goss peeled off at the end of the Rue de Rivoli and Mark Renshaw angled across the Place de la Concorde before doing his rocket-launcher thing at the bottom of the Champs-Elysées, only one outcome seemed possible. Cavendish duly made himself the first British rider in the history of the race to capture the green jersey, given to the winner of the classification based on points awarded for the intermediate and final sprints.

The head-on view made it appear a close-run thing. But Edvald Boasson Hagen never got within a bike's length of Cavendish, while André Greipel was away over on the other side of the broad boulevard, fighting to hold on to third place. In taking his career aggregate of Tour stage wins to 20, five of them this year, the 26-year-old Manxman was simply untouchable.

Only one other Briton has worn a Tour jersey on the podium in Paris. That was Robert Millar, the brilliant, reclusive Scottish climber crowned king of the mountains in 1984. Whereas Millar was sparing with his utterances, Cavendish is a fountain of emotions, keen to express his joy in his success but always giving equal weight to his gratitude towards the HTC‑Highroad team-mates who negotiate the position from which he produces the final burst of deadly acceleration.

The first word he spoke into a microphone after the victory – "Finally!" – reflected the frustrations of the previous two years, when he came close to capturing the maillot vert. "We've worked so hard for it," he said. "Today we put the whole team on the front for the last five kilometres. It was a block headwind finish, so you've got to be tough."

In fact at one point during the three-week race he had to be tougher than anyone knew. The later Alpine stages had been demanding, but worse were the Pyrénées in the second week. "The Alps are not so steep and the roads are better. I'm usually OK there. But the Pyrénées are hard. And I got sick in the first week. You can't say anything at the time because your competitors will take advantage of it, but I had a really bad stomach, an intestinal problem. I was really, really low during the stages in the Massif Central and the Pyrénées, but as usual the team was incredible."

He paid particular tribute to Bernie Eisel, the 30-year-old Austrian rider who has been the team's road captain and his room-mate on this Tour. "He's my best friend in the whole world," a typically effusive Cavendish said last week.

"But it's not just Bernie, it's all of the guys," he saidon Sunday night. During his struggles in the mountains, he said, "they could have been having an easier day but instead they're sitting up waiting for me and then towing me up to the gruppetto for the final climb, carrying bidons [water bottles] for me. They got me through this Tour."

There are strong rumours that he will switch to the Sky colours next year, possibly taking Eisel and Renshaw with him. But he has a wicked sense of humour, and when he was asked yesterday to talk about his future there was a teasing pause of half a minute before the answer came with a grin: "No."