Mark Cavendish: The day I knew it was all over with Sky An, ahem, short speech followed, after which I was sure the same thing wouldn't happen again. Except it did, both the next day and again the day after that, until my morning diatribes were a feature of daily life. But all my speeches were producing was hilarity - so much so that the team produced a warning poster on my behalf and stuck it above the machine. That was probably the most the team laughed in the entire three weeks - which in itself was telling - but the story of the coffee capsules became a kind of parable for me. For all that I loved Brad (Wiggins), Chris Froome, Richie Porte and the other guys, they were totally wrapped up in their own world. They had approached the business of making coffee the same way that they dealt with riding their bikes - with tunnel vision. The staff at Team Sky were there to execute their designated task and think of nothing else. It was efficient, it was professional, it put other teams to shame - but it also wasn't a lot of fun. Our head directeur at the Tour was Sean Yates. One of only four British riders up to that point to have worn the yellow jersey at the Tour, Sean was revered as a legend of the sport in the UK. Before the Tour I had done only one race with Sean, the Tour of Romandy, and quickly got the sense that he didn't particularly rate or admire me. I assumed that it wasn't personal and that he was one of those former bike riders with preconceptions about sprinters, that they were lazy and prima donnas. I found him cold, uninspiring and miserly in praise. I didn't count on getting much support from Sean at the Tour, but even these low expectations were dashed. On stage six a huge crash 26 kilometres from the finish left dozens injured and even more delayed behind the pile-up ruled out of contention for the win. I had made it around the wreckage but to do so had skidded on my rear wheel, causing the tyre to explode. I reached for my radio and announced that I'd punctured. I heard nothing so I repeated what I'd just said, all the time trying to cling on to the back of the lead group while riding on a flat. For a few hundred metres I was hanging in there, until the road began to descend and I could no longer stand the pace with no air in my tyre. Finally, having remained silent in the radio the whole time, Yates arrived in our first team car, waited while the mechanic swapped my wheel, then drove immediately off without even giving me a push. I had never been left stranded like that after a mechanical, not even as a 22-year-old neo-pro in a tiny one-day race in France. Here we were at the Tour de France, on a stage that I was the favourite to win, and I was the world champion. It was July 6. This was the date when I realised this could be my first and last Tour de France with Team Sky. It was also the date of my last conversation with Sean Yates. While I'd continue to do my best, offering Brad as much assistance as I could both on and off the bike it was sometimes hard to reconcile my own frustration with the team's rampant success. First Chris Froome won the first big mountain stage in the Vosges, with Brad taking the yellow jersey on the same day. Then that pair finished first and second in the next big general classification showdown - a time trial in Besançon. Chris had been selected for the Tour as Brad's domestique de luxe in the mountains, yet had briefly accelerated away from his leader on the climb to La Toussuire, embarrassing and briefly isolating Brad, and also sparking debate about who should be leading Team Sky. My own view from inside the team was that Chris had acted in good faith, just a little clumsily. If he'd wanted to betray Brad, he would have attacked on the penultimate climb that day, not the final one, and he wouldn't have waited when he got the order to stop his effort over the radio. It was easy to see it as evidence of Chris's naivety, which could make you either laugh or wince at times, both on and off the bike. It may also, however, have been that Chris, like me, felt that we had gone from having the opportunity to aim for the moon and the stars to a risk-averse strategy with just one aim: securing the yellow jersey for Brad.