Mark Cavendish: The Tour de France comeback for 'cycling's greatest sprinter'

Off a long, straight road in Alicante province, Mark Cavendish sits in a dusty valley, smiling with team-mates during a break in the day's training among the jagged hills and orange trees of eastern Spain.

It's unseasonably warm and windy for January, but Cavendish's obvious high spirits rise above the continual gusts — as well as the Flemish retorts of his fellow riders. There's joy on his face — no hint of the horror of the November burglary at his home in Essex, or the broken ribs and a collapsed lung sustained in a heavy crash at a track race that same month.

He is small in stature next to several of the powerhouses who aid his work for the ebullient Belgian Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl team, and he sits on the edge of the throng, but he is the patriarch. You can just sense it — born out of his success as cycling's greatest sprinter.

Last July, Cavendish triumphed four times at the Tour de France to bring himself level with Eddy Merckx's record 34 stage victories. At the age of 36, it was one of sport's great comebacks.

Cavendish had not won a Tour stage for five years. He'd suffered setback after setback, season after season. Injury, illness and depression combined as he considered retirement in late 2020. It was an emotional return and one that resonated strongly among cycling fans.

«It was the first time that… as a sportsperson you're disassociated from a human point a lot of the time. It was the most connected I felt in my whole career, to the fans,» Cavendish says. «They're not watching you do something — they're living it with you.

»All I can say is the biggest joy I got from 2021 was people saying 'thank you'. I haven't really heard that before — I would get 'well done' or 'congratulations'. But I got 'thank you for