Cyclist
The sprinting Methusaleh: Mark Cavendish’s rollercoaster ride to #35
Buoyed by a genuine and sincere love for the sport, Mark Cavendish’s career is accented with turbulence, sanguinity and sometimes hubris. ‘I know what it takes to be at the highest level,’ Cavendish told the press in Florence before the 2022 Tour de France. After a career spanning three decades and plenty of sprinting generations, he remains self-aware in his pre-Tour soliloquies.
‘Only you are in charge of your own destiny,’ he told the crowd in Mâcon before Stage 6 of the 2024 Tour, just one day after breaking Eddy Merckx’s Tour de France stage wins record.
The dramaturgy of Cavendish’s career could only be dictated by the man himself. Rainbows, gold medals, sorrow and savoir-faire direct the Cavendish narrative from his debut in 2007 to his 35th stage win in Saint Vulbas this year. Bluntly, simplicity and concision cannot be associated with Cavendish’s seventeen-year-long tussle with the Tour de France.
Genesis
In a time-trial fit for a king around central London, Mark Cavendish’s Tour de France career began in 2007. His debut Tour came at a time when the youngster was hoping for Olympic medals on the track rather than road glory. For the T-Mobile rider, a top ten in a hectic sprint on Stage 3 into Compiègne helped elevate his freshly-found name.
However, with the Beijing Olympics in sight, his second Tour came with more success.
On the roads of Châteauroux in the west of France, Cavendish launched early in the blue of his Columbia team. Looking around, he was shocked to see no one else close to him by the 50 metre marker. With a boyish flare Cavendish posted up with his hands against his head, in a state of pure jubilation.
Rivals hallowed in the history books such as Robbie McEwen and Thor Hushovd were left stunned as the 23-year-old Brit claimed the stage win.
In his second Tour de France, momentum started to build, much like it would for the rest of his career. Three more stage wins fell his way before he abandoned on Stage 15 to focus on the Olympics. In an era where the Tour de France broadcast had barely reached HD quality, Cavendish was already one of the top sprinters in the pack.
2009 only reinforced his status. From start to finish, he was the sprinter to beat, claiming six stage wins. This tally in a single Tour has not been matched since.
Now pioneers of the new ‘sprint train phenomenon’, Cavendish’s HTC-Highroad squad led the charge on how to prepare for a sprint. Bert Grabsch, Mark Renshaw and Bernie Eisel sculpted out a winning formula for the Manx Missile. Together, this team was unstoppable.
At 25 years old, Cavendish had laid the groundwork for his record-breaking tally. He already had fourteen stage wins to his name. In modern terms, that’s three more than Tadej Pogačar at the same age.
Every shade of the rainbow
No one could come close to Cavendish in the early 2010s. Victories poured in from all four corners of France, from Bordeaux to Montpellier, Brignoles and, of course, Paris. During his prime, he made the Champs-Elysées his own. Four times he won the Parisian finale, in his team jersey as well as green and rainbow.
Adopted by the French home fans and organisers, the points classification was reformed in 2011 with the intent of favouring sprinters. The race boss’s wishes were Cavendish’s command. The Brit claimed another impressive haul from the 2011 Tour, including a win in Châteauroux once again, paving the way to his first Tour de France maillot vert.
In a golden year, Cavendish bagged a World Championship victory in 2011, pushing the newly-found heights of British Cycling even further into the unknown. On this wave of homegrown success, he joined forces with Team Sky in their masterplan to win the 2012 Tour de France.
In the shadow of Wiggins’ Tour triumph, he remained among the top sprinters. Three wins along the way including one of his most emphatic victories in Brive-la-Gaillarde on Stage 18 and a yellow jersey leadout on the Champs-Elysées to secure a fourth consecutive win on the boulevard.
A British National Championship victory later in 2013, Cavendish had more company in the sprint finales. The rise of German sprinters Marcel Kittel and André Greipel threatened his sprint supremacy. For the first time since his Tour debut, he left the Tour de France with fewer than three stage wins.
Shoulder-to-shoulder
Now under the direction of sprinting megaladons QuickStep, Cav kept returning to the Tour de France through thick and thin. A crash in his mother’s hometown of Harrogate in 2014 proved disappointing, but a comeback in Fougères twelve months later saw him return to the top step of a Tour de France stage podium.
However the presence of Marcel Kittel weighed heavier than imagined. The German phenom pushed Cavendish out of QuickStep and the Manxman hopped over top the newly-promoted Dimension Data team.
Leading the African team at the Tour de France, Cavendish proved that the new pretenders of the sprinting discipline were no stronger than him. With a win coming as early as day one on the D-Day beaches of Normandy. There, he began his first real comeback Tour de France, claiming the first stage and the right to wear the coveted yellow jersey.
Looking like the Mark Cavendish of 2010, the Brit claimed three further victories, cementing his name as the best sprinter at that year’s Tour de France, even if Peter Sagan took home the green jersey.
Speaking of Sagan, Cavendish’s rivalry with the Slovak would turn sour the following year. A crash into Vittel on Stage 4 would send the Tour into frenzy. In a hectic sprint finale, Cavendish and Sagan locked elbows on the barriers, forcing the Manxman to hit the deck. As comissaires rushed to the rulebook, Sagan was sent home from the Tour as Cavendish emerged from hospital with a sling around his arm. As he had in 2014, he abandoned the race with no wins.
Thus, his tally would remain unchanged at 30 stage wins for quite some time. 2018 saw an underwhelming comeback sparse of any top five results, and his top speed looked to be wavering against younger sprinting opposition. His days at the top were looking long gone.
The Black Dog
In the summer of 2018, Cavendish was diagnosed with clinical depression.
‘It’s a nightmare to live with,’ he said. ‘You’re just empty. The sense of worthlessness. I’d lost any get-up that I ever had. I was too consumed in self-pity to care about what anyone thought of me.’ In his highest and lowest times, these low thoughts take hold.
Professional cyclists, particularly men, rarely discuss mental health struggles in the media, even despite the sport’s prickly past with mental illness. For Cavendish to be so open and blunt about his mental health is refreshingly honest and striking. The fortitude to wrestle against this should not be underestimated.
Staring into the void
The results were far from convincing in 2019. Cavendish only reach the top five of a sprint on one occasion before the Tour that year. His Dimension Data team squabbled around the sprinter in the run-up to the race. Ralf Aldag, the team’s head of performance, supported Cavendish and championed his Tour inclusion. However, the team’s owner Doug Ryder disagreed. After the in-fighting, it was decided that he was not in a position to strengthen the team’s chances at the Tour de France, meaning that he would miss the Tour for the first time since his debut in 2007.
This did not go unnoticed. Cavendish took to Twitter to declare that he was ‘heartbroken’ and that his form was ‘in the perfect place’, even if his battle with chronic fatigue as a result of Epstein Barr virus had altered his progress.
Left in the doldrums by his team, Cavendish’s future seemed uncertain. An Olympic comeback on the track was derailed at the end of 2019 and he soon found himself on the refreshed Bahrain-McLaren squad alongside his managerial wingman Rod Ellingworth.
He dodged Bahrain-McLaren’s Grand Tour lineups in 2020 and soon slipped into a role almost as a cycling novelty act. The Manx Missile was barely a Stone Age spear at this point. His sprint was blunt and the lights looked like they were going out.
Now a lead-out man and statesman of the team, he found himself lost between the new stars of the post-pandemic cycling world. A couple of breakaways in the Classics kept his name alive, but this was far from the heroics of old. For the first time in his career, he was forced to fight for a contract.
‘That’s perhaps the last race of my career now,’ Cavendish told Belgian television after completing Gent-Wevelgem that year. Visibly moved, he couldn’t contain his emotions, tearing up behind the usually stoic lenses of his signature Oakleys. The end seemed nigh.
A patriarch dressed in blue (and green)
Only three weeks of 2020 remained when headlines emerged that Cavendish was set to be rescued from a backdoor exit by Deceuninck-QuickStep. ‘My heart said yes and my brain said no,’ QuickStep boss Patrick Lefevere told the press after the news broke on an unsuspecting winter morning.
‘I can’t stop like this,’ Cavendish told Lefevere, his former principal, during the negotiations.
Vindicated by this outstretched hand, Cavendish was soon lifting his arms in victory after pulling on the royal blue of QuickStep again.
He wasn’t due to ride the Tour in 2021 though, but through the misfortune of the other sprinter’s in the team’s hierarchy, he made his miraculous return to the race.
In Fougères on Stage 4, he returned to the head of affairs, piloted by Michael Mørkøv. Like the prime Cavendish of years gone by, the clocks had been reset as he crossed the line that day the victor. Suddenly, Fougères had become the amphitheatre of one of sport’s greatest comebacks.
History continued to repeat itself that week in Châteauroux. Having won there two times prior, he found himself ushering the younger sprinting pretenders through the finish like a tour guide.
The humdrum Châteauroux is forever etched in Cavendish’s pathos – a time capsule of his greatness and longevity, from 2008 to 2011 to 2021. As he lifted his arms on the podium in the green jersey in the town, Cavendish clutched the stuffed toy with a childish vigour and comfort. In this moment, it became clear that boy-racer never left.
With two more stage wins along the way, he found himself exhausted under the Carcassonne sun after winning Stage 13, barely able to comprehend his physical verity. He had finally equalled Eddy Merckx’s record tally of 34 Tour de France stage wins.
No fairytale is easy. Fate dictated that Cavendish’s record-breaking 35th stage win was not to be in Paris. That would be all too predictable for the man who has later denied any idea of a ‘romantic’ curtain call.
The euphoria of the Tour turned sour in the rear-view mirror, the relationship between Cavendish and Lefevere grew rocky and his time at QuickStep was running out. Despite a win at the Giro d’Italia in 2022, he had lost the support of the Belgian squad as they favoured younger stars and not only was he not picked for the Tour, his contract ran out at the end of the season.
A Kazakh prophecy
Dumped by Patrik Lefevere at the end of 2022, Cavendish’s future was just as uncertain as it was back in 2020. In January 2023, rumours started stirring surrounding a lifeline from Alexander Vinokourov’s Astana squad. Historically a GC team, the marriage between the two was met with surprise and apprehension. This pairing shouldn’t have worked.
In a team bare of sprinting support, he started his tenure at Astana with consternation. But thist was quickly rebutted with glory in Rome at the Giro d’Italia. ‘I had some help from old friends,’ Cavendish recounts after Ineos Grenadiers’ Geraint Thomas joined his leadout for the final stage.
A stage winner at his final Giro d’Italia, he could only hope of similar fortunes at his final Tour de France. He had already confirmed his retirement at the end of 2023 with a teary press conference in Italy during the Giro. This was supposed to be the last dance.
He looked like the record was his on Stage 7 of the 2023 Tour, stretching ahead before mechanical issues saw Jasper Philipsen overhaul him on the line. The next day, on an uninspiring stretch of road in northwestern France, the TV directors cut to the back of the peloton to show a helpless Mark Cavendish lying on the blazing asphalt. A few minutes later, we were left to reflect on his career as the camera lingered on his hopeless thousand-yard stare from the back of the medical car. The highs and lows of the sprinters’ destiny were never been more evident.
‘You can’t finish a career like that,’ Vinokourov told us before the 2024 Tour de France, though he was sure to emphasise that it was Cavendish’s decision to leave the Tour on his own terms. As he said after winning stage win 35, ‘Only you are in charge of your own destiny.’
The assumption of Mark Cavendish
In teasing fashion, like an encore at a concert, Cavendish returned in 2024. Much like a rockstar on stage, he had left out one final hit from his setlist.
The so-called ‘Project 35’ was born and Astana fine-tuned their setup in support of Cavendish’s history-making effort at the Tour. A team of mismatched riders soon became a cohesive leadout who collectively lived and died by Cavendish’s sword. With a hit squad of friends and colleagues from his winning past jumping aboard for one last song.
The earnestness he presented in 2023 had returned in 2024. Never had Cavendish seemed so happy and wholesome at a race. The prickliness of the previous decade seemed to have dissipated as he prepared for his last shot – and this time, it really was his final chance.
Echoes of the late 2010s rang out on Stages 1 and 2 as he found himself off the back struggling to keep his stomach at ease. Through the early mountains, the time cut seemed like a looming threat. Astana Qazaqstan’s own riders had to be pulled back to support the Brit’s quest just to remain in the fight for that 35th stage win.
However, on Stage 5 from Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne to Saint Vulbas, the Methusaleh re-emerged. Regardless of the previous downfalls, he will always be a man who knows how to win a sprint. Living long in the memory of every cycling fan, Cavendish’s 35th Tour de France win came in an exhalation that felt equally cathartic and historic. All the talk and pressure from before felt like hot air in the moment he lifted his arms.
The formula Astana Qazaqstan had worked on had been executed in clinical style. The characters behind the scenes were forgiven for foolishly believing that a 39-year-old could win a Tour de France sprint against riders considered to be the fastest men of all-time. There were no handouts given by his colleagues, let that be known. The time for that had been and gone. He employed decades of sprinting expertise into a royal final three kilometres of Stage 5, gliding between wheels, squeezing his way through the pack and emerging a bike-length ahead of his nearest rival.
In this moment, let’s not talk about ruthless macho and speed. This is a story of determination and strength of character just as much as it’s a tale of physical strength. Longevity in this sport is hard to come by nowadays, particularly in this era of hyper-specialisation and sporting optimisation. Mark Cavendish will always stand tall as a man who chose his own destiny, even if forces around him tried to dictate his own seventeen-year-long path to the finishing line in Saint Vulbas. He knew what he could do and he did it.
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