Mark Cavendish: The leader of the pack

The world's second-most famous cyclist opens up on his staggering six stage wins in the Tour de France, his aims to grab the green jersey and world gold next year, and his notorious run-ins with the media... Alasdair Fotheringham speaks to Mark Cavendish

(afp/getty images)

Perched on the far end of an isolated peninsula in a corner of the volcanic island of Lanzarote, the Club De La Santa hotel's mass of lights glimmering in a vast expanse of seawater gives it an eerie similarity to Alcatraz prison.

Such a cut-off spot would be ideal, you would think, for Mark Cavendish, one of the health hotel's more recent guests (or should that be inmates?) to brood over the injustice of a disqualification during a crucial sprint in last July's Tour de France.

Allegedly shifting his approach path to the finishing line saw Cavendish severely punished with a relegation to last place. The decision was widely viewed as excessively harsh and cost Britain's most successful ever road cyclist any chance of winning the Tour's green jersey, the race's Holy Grail for sprinters. But the 24-year-old Manxman insists that even though he is disappointed at losing that particular battle – in a year where nobody could come near him in the Tour's sprints – he is adamant that his own war to become Britain's first winner of the green jersey is far from over.

"Without that disqualification, I'm sure I would have got it," Cavendish says while wolfing down some bread and honey prior to a gruelling four-hour training ride over Lanzarote's windswept roads. People can say what they like about how Thor [Hushovd, 2009 green jersey winner] won it by breaking away in the Alps. But it's a sprinter's jersey. How could it not be when they give 25 points for a win on the flatter stages, and only 15 in the mountains?

"So if I was disappointed with how I lost the green, all because of a disqualification, I wasn't distraught. If I had been, I'd have gone to the Sports Arbitration Council. Besides, getting so close proves I took the right approach, because I said the green jersey should come of its own if I won sprints. Instead I've got to take the positive and focus on next year's race."

When it comes to taking the positives, Cavendish certainly has plenty to choose from, both from the Tour and his overall performance in 2009. The Columbia-HTC pro won 23 races last season, more than any other male rider, and that included a staggering six stages of the Tour de France – a bigger haul from a single edition of cycling's top event than anyone, including Lance Armstrong, had managed in the last three decades.

There was also an epic close victory in Cavendish's debut ride in the Milan-San Remo Classic, Italy's biggest one-day race, as well as three stages of the Tour of Italy and a dazzling array of other wins – all the way from Qatar in January to Missouri in September.

"In every stage race I've taken part in since the Three Days of De Panne [in Belgium] in the spring of 2008, I've won at least once," Cavendish points out with justified pride. "That's something I'd like to continue."

After each victory, Cavendish can always be seen making a point of hugging his Columbia-HTC team-mates and he is adamant that without them his win-rate would be far lower. Cavendish's chances of going for the green jersey next year, he says, would also be much reduced.

"If I say that I want to do something or I'm going to do something, everyone in this team has faith in me. They supported me 100 per cent in San Remo, even though my chances were limited and when it would have been easy for them to ride their own race. When I go all-out for green next July, I know I'll have had all eight guys supporting me all the way. I know I can count on them, and that makes all the difference."

His success rate is such that Cavendish is one of cycling's most high-profile figures and that was even before his phenomenal 2009 season. In 2008, internet research revealed that in terms of user hits on news web pages, Cavendish was second only to Lance Armstrong.

Even in far-flung Paraguay, where Cavendish is spending Christmas with his girlfriend Fiorella Migliore, he is so well known that he will have a police escort when training. "The local cycling federation have laid that on for me, for them it's really important I'm there and they're treating me really well. The only thing is I'll be out training at six in the morning because it'll be 50 degrees by midday!"

Despite all this adulation, the 24-year-old Manxman insists that on a British level at least, he is not the ideal representative for cycling. Instead he says that role is better suited to the Olympic track star Sir Chris Hoy, or Bradley Wiggins, fourth in last year's Tour. "Sir Chris got the BBC Sports Personality of the Year last year and that was great because he was and is a brilliant ambassador for the sport and everybody was really impressed," Cavendish points out.

"Then if your fanbase is British like Bradley's, he's a perfect face for the British market. But if you're trying to do everything and win as much as you can in road cycling like I am, not just the Tour de France, then you end up with more of an international profile."

The other issue, Cavendish admits, is that he has become increasingly abrasive with media types who have not done their research in advance before talking to him. As he puts it with a grin: "The other day somebody joked that it was just as well it wasn't me that was Sports Personality Of The Year, otherwise everyone would have thought cycling was full of wankers!"

However, in next autumn's World Championships, if all goes well, it will be Cavendish, not Wiggins, bidding to become Britain's first gold medallist in the road race in almost four decades. And it is a mission that he is taking very seriously indeed. "I've made the decision to do no post-Tour criteriums [exhibition races] which as a professional rider could lose me a lot of money. But in return, there's the possibility of the World Championships title. So I'll rest up in August, but then I'll probably head for the Tour of Spain as build-up for the worlds."

Should Cavendish ride in Spain, he could become Britain's first winner in all three of the major Tours – Italy, France and Spain – within the same year. Even starting more than one Grand Tour in the same season is regarded as fairly unusual. It's indicative of how tough this challenge is that only one rider, Italian Mario Cipollini back in 2002, has pulled off this particular Grand Slam of stage wins in the last decade.

Cavendish says that his Columbia-HTC squad prefers the Briton to race in the shorter Tour of California, not the potentially more demanding Tour of Italy this spring. But the Manxman believes there is no chance of burning himself out if he races in Europe.

"The team get a bit concerned with my race programme but at the end of the day, when I'm not racing, I'm training and I prefer to race. So I'm racing to get in good condition. It gets me focused, I get a regime, a massage, I eat properly and sleep properly and I haven't got the distractions of home. Even in my first year as a pro, if you included the track, I raced 120 days, and that's a lot (the normal level is 100 days maximum). But I really didn't mind then and I don't mind now. It's no secret that I'm passionate about racing."

It was indicative of Cavendish's feelings for the sport that even after his exceptional Tour de France, rather than ease back, he went on racing. A week after he had blasted across the Champs Elysées with his arms held high (another British first) the following Sunday Cavendish was battling for victory again, but this time with just the minimum of media coverage in the tiny GP Bochum in western Germany. Held in a city where Cavendish used to live as an amateur, the Grand Prix Bochum 2009 was run in a torrential downpour and featured multiple ascents of a short but difficult city-centre climb. "The organiser said I could take it easy, he knew I'd just raced the Tour and I'd done enough with just turning up," Cavendish said. "But I told him if I go to a race I go to win it," which of course he duly did.

Attractive as it is to the fans, Cavendish's addiction to victory can be a two-edged weapon because in the battle to win the points jersey he has to fight for placings as much as wins.

"I didn't learn much from this year's Tour about fighting for the green jersey [because] my prediction about what would happen wasn't that wrong. I knew the stages I was going to win and I went for them. The only problem is that you have to stay consistent, like in [stage six of the Tour] to Barcelona, where I was sprinting for a place, I had to keep going. Sprinting for 13th position, somehow, just isn't in my genetics. For me it's win or nothing."

Something for Cavendish to chew over in his Alcatraz-like retreat in Lanzarote. Given his current success rate, the problem looks like it'll remain purely hypothetical for some time to come.

Life and times

Name Mark Cavendish

Nicknames Cannonball, Manx Missile

Date of birth 21 May 1985 (aged 24)

Place of birth Douglas, Isle of Man

Height 1.75m (5ft 9in)

Weight 69kg (10st 10lb)

Team Columbia-HTC

Achievements 10 Tour de France stage wins; 5 Giro d'Italia stage wins; 2009 Milan-San Remo; 2 World Championship madison golds; 1 Commonwealth Games gold

Early career Races BMXs at National Sports Centre on Isle of Man before moving to mountain bike racing; leaves work as bank clerk to track race as an amateur.

2005 Begins career with British Track Cycling team, winning gold in madison at Los Angeles World Track Championships; wins European championship points race and takes up road racing, riding Tour of Berlin and Tour of Britain.

2006 Wins two stages at Tour of Berlin; wins gold in scratch race while representing Isle of Man at Commonwealth Games; wins points classification at Tour of Britain and earns pro contract with T-Mobile

2007 Wins first pro race, the Grote Scheldeprijs and wins at Four Days of Dunkirk and Volta a Catalunya.

2008 Wins madison at World Championships; wins two Giro d'Italia stages; becomes first Briton to win four stages of a Tour de France

2009 Wins points classification at Tour of California; wins Milan-San Remo; wins six stages of Tour de France; wins Sparkassen Giro Bochum and 50th road race win at Tour of Missouri

Matthew Fearon