The 2024 Tour de France gets underway on Italian soil this Saturday in the beautiful city of Florence. Anticipation is building amongst cycling enthusiasts worldwide, especially for Sir Mark Cavendish fans. The British track and road pedalling knight and legend is just one Tour de France stage victory away from eclipsing Eddy Merckx’s 34-stage win record, which has stood for almost 50 years.
Mark Cavendish, aka the Manx Missile, soared to four stage successes at Le Tour in 2021 to draw level with Merckx but didn’t register a win during last year’s edition. Can the Astana Qazaqstan rider, now 39 years of age, pull it out of the bag in his 15th and last Tour de France adventure?
Embed from Getty ImagesA Sprint Star Is Born On The Island Of Speed
The Isle Of Man is renowned for its annual motorbike TT racing festival, but the non-motor variety of bikes got the cogs whirring in a young Mark Cavendish. He grew up in the island’s capital of Douglas and fell in love with BMX riding. His first big cycling breakthrough came at 18 when he was added to the British Cycling’s Olympic Academy for junior riders.
Cav thrived at the academy, and after two years of joining, he won gold in the Madison with Rob Hayles at the 2005 Track World Championships. The same year, he claimed the top spot in the ‘points’ race at the European Championships.
It was an essential period for the up-and-coming young star. Mark Cavendish signed his first professional contract with Team Sparkasse, which fell under the T-Mobile Team umbrella. He was victorious in two stages of the Tour of Britain in 2006. He impressed the T-Mobile selectors so much that he was included in their 2007 Tour de France squad.
Cavendish’s Love Affair With The Tour De France Begins
It proved to be a tough Tour de France start for Cavendish. The Manxman crashed out during the opening two stages of the 2007 edition and pulled out of the event as it hit the Alps. Cav may have been disappointed not to make more of a positive impact in the biggest cycling event on the planet, but he didn’t let it affect him adversely. He would have a stellar debut professional season, winning 11 stage wins in total across multiple races.
Cavendish went from strength to strength on the road in the following year. He won two stages of the Giro d’Italia before winning his first-ever one at the Tour de France. That landmark inaugural victory came on day 5, the longest stage of the 2008 TdF. The final breakaway rider, Nicolas Vogondy, was passed by the bunching sprinters only 30 metres from the line, and Cavendish saw off rivals Hushovd, Freire and Zabel to take the win. The T-Mobile rider claimed four victories in total during Le Tour 2008. He abandoned the race again halfway through, but the Manx Missile had left an indelible mark on the cycling world.
Embed from Getty ImagesSix Of The Best For The Manx Missile
Cavendish went into overdrive in 2009. He secured three stages at the Giro d’Italia and surpassed his previous year’s Tour de France stage-winning tally, clinching six victories on French soil. The Manxman also proved those who doubted his resilience wrong, as he won two stages during the opening week, two during the second week and two during the final week, including the prestigious final stage on the Champs-Elysees. Thus, he completed his first-ever Tour de France, finishing in 131st position. It became his most successful-ever French campaign in terms of stage wins. Before the Tour de France, Cavendish had also landed his first-ever victory in one of cycling’s ‘Five Monuments’, the Milan–San Remo.
Despite a slow start to the 2010 campaign due to health issues and several high-profile race crashes, Cavendish again found form when it mattered most and reeled off five wins at the Tour de France. He had missed the Giro earlier that year but competed at the final Grand Tour, the Vuelta a Espana, in September, where he secured three stage successes.
Tour de France: The Battle For The Green Jersey
Regarding Grand Tour stage successes during a year, Mark Cavendish has never bettered his 2009 tally of nine, but 2011 was another impressive year to add to his bulging cycling CV. He secured two wins at the Giro d’Italia, received an MBE from the Queen and then headed to France, where he claimed another 5-stage haul, making it 16 wins in three years at Le Tour.
After finishing second in the TdF points classification in both 2009 and 2010, he also finally got to wear green for good at the 2011 edition—a feat he has only repeated once more since, ten years later, at Le Tour 2021. 2011 also ended on a high for the Manx Missile. He became the first Brit to claim UCI Road World Championship gold for over 45 years in Copenhagen. The public also loved Cav by voting him the BBC Sports Personality Of The Year.
Embed from Getty ImagesThe Sky’s The Limit
In a momentous career shift, the rumours became a reality when Cavendish jumped ship and joined Team Sky for the start of the 2012 campaign. That year, he won three Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France stages. The third of those Le Tour successes was again the final stage in Paris, Cavendish’s fourth straight victory on the Champs-Elysees. In doing so, he became the first rainbow-wearing World Champion to cross the line first in the French capital.
The Team Sky experiment was over before it began as Cavendish put pen to paper and signed for Belgian team Omega Pharma-Quick-Step at the end of 2012 in readiness for the forthcoming 2013 campaign. The partnership started with a bang as the Manxman clinched the Tour of Qatar after winning 4 6 stages. Cav then produced his best Giro d’Italia performance, winning five stages and clinching his first Maglia Ciclamino as the overall Giro points winner. It gave him the clean sweep of Grand Tour’s points crowns. Despite picking up his lowest stage-winning tally at the Tour de France for six years, he still finished runner-up in the points standings.
A Quiet Spell For the Manx Master
Mark Cavendish wouldn’t win a single Grand Tour stage during 2014, the first year he had failed to do so since his professional debut season in 2007. He didn’t compete in the Giro and wouldn’t do so again until 2022 when the Vuelta of 2011 was his last. In the 2014 Le Tour, he crashed out in the opening stage in Yorkshire with a shoulder injury and didn’t make the start line for day 2. Cav also failed to record any stage successes at the 2017 & 2018 Tour de France.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Manx master, though, as Cavendish had some memorable highlights during the 2015 and 2016 campaigns. He racked up stage wins in the Tour of Turkey and the Tour of California at the start of 2015. There was also a sole stage success at the Tour de France, where he finished 4th in the race for the green points jersey. Before the start of 2016, Cavendish joined Team Dimension Data and former teammates Mark Renshaw and Bernhard Eisel.
It proved a success for Team DD, as Cav clinched victory in stage 1 of the 2016 Le Tour, the first time he’d ever won the opening stage. It was also the first time he’d worn that prestigious yellow jersey. He may have only worn it for a day, but he did secure another three-stage victory during the race before abandoning it during the third week. Cavendish shifted focus to the Rio Olympics and picked up his first Games medal when second in the Omnium.
Hoping To Rediscover Some Of The Old Manx Magic
After a challenging period, Cavendish re-signed to Deceuninck–Quick-Step for the 2021 season, and he clinched his first professional victory in 3 years when winning four stages of the Tour of Turkey. It also proved a positive for Cav when teammate Sam Bennett dropped out of the Tour de France, as he became the team’s lead sprinter. The Manxman grabbed his chance with aplomb, winning four stages, which moved him joint top in the overall Tour de France stage wins with Eddy Merckx. He also won his second-ever points green jersey. There was no Tour de France for Cav in 2022, but he did grab a stage win in the Giro d’Italia, his 53rd Grand Tour stage success.
With Quick-Step not renewing his contract, Cavendish signed with the Astana Qazaqstan Team at the start of 2023. Like the previous year, he claimed a sole Giro d’Italia stage success in Rome’s final stage. However, there were no wins at the Tour de France, with his campaign ending abruptly after a crash on stage 8. There were concerns that Cav might throw in the towel, but much to the relief of his hoards of fans; he announced that he would give Le Tour another crack in 2024.
Embed from Getty ImagesCavendish Looks To Eclipse the Mighty Merckx
The bookies reckon Cavendish has a good chance of moving in front of Eddy Merckx and winning a stage at the Tour de France over the coming weeks. He’s an 11/10 shot to do so. There are eight stages denoted as being ‘Flat’, and with most of those taking place in the first half of the race, he hopefully should be able to have a crack at most of them.
Belgian sprinter Jasper Philipsen looks to be Cav’s main threat. The Alpecin–Deceuninck rider claimed two Tour de France stage wins in 2022 and doubled that to four wins in 2023. The bookies only make him 5/4 to win 5+ stages this time, and he’s been in fine form, including being victorious in the Milan–San Remo and finishing second in the Paris–Roubaix.
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Image Credit: Deposit Photos
