Mark Cavendish

Mark Simon Cavendish (born 21 May 1985) is a Manx professional road racing cyclist who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam.

As a track cyclist he specialises in the madison, points race, and scratch race disciplines; as a road racer he is a sprinter.

He is widely considered one of the greatest road sprinters of all time, and in 2021 was called "the greatest sprinter in the history of the Tour and of cycling" by Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France.

He gained a place as one of the first six riders selected for British Cycling's Olympic Academy for junior riders in 2003 having almost been rejected because of his relatively poor performance in stationary bike tests.

Coaches Rod Ellingworth, John Herety and Simon Lillistone lobbied British Cycling Performance Director Peter Keen to include him because of his potential.

Whilst at the academy, he won two gold medals at the 2003 Island Games.

Cavendish progressed well at the academy.

Ellingworth said, "Cav kind of liked it" when asked about the rigid rules and "dictatorship style" of the academy.

The junior riders lived on £58 a week and financial management became a part of life at the academy as well as cooking and cleaning.

Cycling Weekly described the academy as "a boot camp style training regime" controlled by Ellingworth, who, after finding out they had skipped a three-hour training ride, made the juniors complete four hours hard training at night.

Although he initially struggled because of a lack of fitness, he recorded his first win in senior competition in March 2004; in the Girvan Three Day race he managed to latch back onto the lead group after being dropped over a climb before winning the finishing sprint ahead of Julian Winn.

In his first years as an elite track rider, Cavendish won gold in the madison at the 2005 and 2008 UCI Track Cycling World Championships riding for Great Britain, with Rob Hayles and Bradley Wiggins respectively, and in the scratch race at the 2006 Commonwealth Games riding for Isle of Man.

As a road cyclist, Cavendish turned professional in 2005 and achieved eleven wins in his first professional season.

Cavendish has won 34 Tour de France stages, tying him for first on the all-time list with Eddy Merckx, contributing to a third-highest total of fifty-three Grand Tour stage victories.

He won gold in the madison with Rob Hayles at the 2005 track world championships in Los Angeles.

They had not raced together before as Hayles' usual partner, Geraint Thomas, had crashed during training a few weeks earlier —but finished one lap ahead of the field to claim the gold medal, followed by the Dutch and Belgian teams, Cavendish's first world title.

Cavendish also won the European championship points race.

Cavendish turned professional in 2005 with Team Sparkasse.

During this time, he rode the Tour de Berlin and the Tour of Britain.

He began 2006 with the Continental team, Team Sparkasse, a feeder squad for the.

After failing to win a medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics he did not compete on track again until 2015, subsequently winning his third UCI Track Cycling World Championships title with Wiggins in the madison in 2016, and an individual silver medal in the omnium at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Cavendish has also won the points classification in all three of the grand tours: the 2010 Vuelta a España, the 2011 and 2021 Tour de France and the 2013 Giro d'Italia.

He won the men's road race at the 2011 Road World Championships, becoming the second male British rider to do so after Tom Simpson.

In the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours, Cavendish was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) "for services to British Cycling."

He also won the 2011 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award with nearly half of the votes going to him out of a field of ten nominees.

Cavendish was born in Douglas, Isle of Man, the son of David, a native of the Isle, and Adele from Yorkshire, England.

He began riding Bicycle motocross (BMX) at an early age, racing at the National Sports Centre in Douglas.

He joined his local club in Douglas at the age of nine – his determination soon becoming apparent.

"He didn't like losing", said Dot Tilbury, his former coach; "He started to win and often he would lap the other riders in the field".

He said: "I was always riding a bike, getting dropped in little races."

"My mum would laugh at me, and I said it was because all my mates had mountain bikes, so I asked for a mountain bike for my thirteenth birthday and got one. The very next day I went out and beat everyone."

It was at that time that Cavendish met British cyclist David Millar at a race on the Isle of Man, who was an inspiration to him.

Cavendish worked in a bank for two years after leaving school to earn enough money for an attempt at a professional career.

In 2012, he became the first person to win the final Champs-Élysées stage in the Tour de France in four consecutive years.

He won seven Grand Tour stages in 2013, one in 2015 and four in 2016.

This included a win on stage one of the 2016 Tour de France, claiming his first Tour de France yellow jersey.

Cavendish crashed with Peter Sagan on stage four of the 2017 Tour de France, forcing him out of the race.

Cavendish continued producing good results until August 2018, when he was diagnosed with Epstein–Barr virus.

Before his diagnosis, Cavendish was able to compete in the 2018 Tour de France but was disqualified after not making the cut-off time on stage eleven.

He returned to the Tour de France at the 2021 edition, winning four stages to take his total to 34 stage wins, equalling the overall stage victory record, and winning his second points classification.