Mark Cavendish’s longevity and breadth of success almost unique for a sprinter

The words “end of an era” should not be lightly used, but when Mark Cavendish hangs up his wheels later this season the term will apply, absolutely. The Manxman’s glittering career has lasted nigh on 20 years, if his first world title in 2005 is taken as a starting point. In bike racing, he is almost unique for a sprinter, both in terms of longevity, and the depth and breadth of his results. Generations of fastmen have come and gone as Cavendish’s list of wins has lengthened over the years, and all the while, from a brash, motormouthed youth, ready for anything, “Cav” has morphed into an elder statesman, a fixture in the sport, if occasionally a slightly terse one.

The intensity of sprinters’ careers, as well as the frequent crashes, mean that as a breed of cyclist they rarely last long. To take just one example, the German powerhouse Marcel Kittel managed eight years, quitting at the age of 31. Cavendish’s absolute peak, the period where if he started a sprint stage of a major race it was virtually a given that he would win, lasted, arguably, from 2009 until 2012, when he became the only sprinter to win the iconic stage finish on the Champs-Élysées in four successive Tours de France, and was named by the newspaper L’Équipe as the best sprinter of all time.

Now, Cavendish does not have the legs of the period of his pomp; then he was virtually impossible to beat thanks to his ability to read a finish, to motivate his teammates with his absolute certainty that he could win, capped by his ability to produce two devastating accelerations as the finish approached. As he rides out his final months with the Kazakh Astana squad, he has yet to win a race in 2023, but the desire to win and the self-belief common to all sprinters