Mark Cavendish and his 35 Tour de France stage wins – Gallery

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Cycling : Tour de France / Stage 5
Arrival Sprint / CAVENDISH Mark (Gbr) Celebration Joie Vreugde / FREIRE Oscar (Esp) / ZABEL Erik (Bel) / HUSHOVD Thor (Nor) /
Cholet - ChÃ¢teauroux Chateauroux (232 Km) /
Ronde van Frankrijk / TDF / Etape Rit / (c)Tim De Waele — Mark Cavendish's first win came in the 2008 Tour de France on stage 5(Image credit: Getty Images)

Mark Cavendish has now officially retired from professional racing, bringing down the curtain on his incredibly successful 18-year career and a unique chapter in cycling history.

The 2024 Tour de France brought his remarkable relationship with the Tour to an end. He fought on to finish the Tour in Nice and then officially retired at Sunday's Tour de France Prudential Singapore Criterium.

In this special feature, we look back at Cavendish's career via his Tour de France victories. From the precocious first four wins with Columbia, the HTC years with its well-oiled lead-out train, through to the brief stint at Team Sky, the less prolific QuickStep years, a more successful 2016 at Dimension Data, before his resurgent stint with Deceuninck-Quickstep in 2021, to his prolonged career with Astana-Qazaqstan into 2024.

Three days later, in the next bunch sprint opportunity, Cavendish does it again. It’s a messy sprint on soaking wet roads in the south of France, and the Columbia train – and the front of the bunch in general – is disrupted by a right-hand bend at the flame rouge. QuickStep and Gert Steegmans end up leading out, but Cavendish violently bursts out from the shelter over to the right-hand side of the road. He holds his speed as the others fade, while his lead-out man Gerald Ciolek manages to follow him all the way to the line to make it a Columbia 1-2.

Cavendish sprints with his right arm bandaged – a result of a collision with a stray football in the Pyrenees three days earlier. It doesn’t slow him down. Once again, QuickStep lead out the sprint and Cavendish, having taken Steegmans’ wheel, shows his anticipation by jumping a split-second before the Belgian can get out. It’s a fiercely sharp acceleration that takes him out front. The likes of Slyvain Chavanel start to come back but by that point Cavendish is celebrating.

The dominance continues. As we wrote in our stage report: "The Cannonball is fast becoming the Cannibal in the sprints." This time Milram lead out for Zabel, and Cavendish is more of a free agent. He gets onto the train before ducking left onto Hushovd’s wheel. After a few moments, the road opens up in the centre-left and he hits out, once again hitting the line a bike length in front of a frustrated line of rivals.

After winning Milan-San Remo in the spring, Cavendish strikes at the first opportunity at the Tour. It’s a hilly stage that ends in a messy sprint but still HTC manage to exert control, with George Hincapie and then Renshaw – an off-season signing – performing a fautless lead-out. Cavendish hits the wind early but never fades and Tyler Farrar cannot get close. He pulls on the green jersey for the first time.

The very next day, Cavendish makes it two, and it’s another show of dominance both from himself and his team, who split the peloton into a 30-man move in the crosswinds some 30km from the finish. Renshaw is there and this time takes him a little closer but the result is the same. Cavendish uses his thumb and pinky to mimic being on his phone in his victory salute – a nod to the team’s new sponsor HTC.

This uphill finish is steeper and expected to offer the likes of Hushovd and Farrar a better shot, but Cavendish has the beating of them for the second time in two days. Milram try to muscle in on the lead-out but Cavendish still has Tony Martin, Hincapie, and Renshaw to make sure he only has to open up in sight of the line. He equals Barry Hoban’s British record of eight Tour de France stage wins.

Cavendish’s copybook has been blotted slightly by his relegation for irregular sprinting on stage 14 and a war of words with Hushovd over the battle for the green jersey, with the Norwegian sweeping up intermediate sprints in the mountain stages to take control. However, Cavendish responds resoundingly with a long-range sprint at the end of a hard stage. Rabobank had tried to ride him out of it on the late cat-2 climb but he hangs on and, despite an early handover from Renshaw, still leaves Hushovd et bashing their bars in frustration.

This is one of the defining sprints in Mark Cavendish’s career. Even if there were no doubts over his speed, some still expressed reservations over his versatility and robustness. Milan-San Remo had swung the argument in his favour but getting through the mountains and winning on the 21st and final day puts it to bed. He becomes the 12th rider in history to win six stages at a single Tour, and setting of the Champs Elysées adds lustre to the achievement. And then there’s the sprint itself. There’s clear daylight. There’s pretty much a one-second gap. From the thrilling side-on shot, his rivals aren’t even in the frame. Cavendish is in a league of his own.

After an unconvincing start, with a crash on stage 1 and 12th place on stage 4, Cavendish gets his Tour rolling with a fine sprint in Montargis. There’s no big HTC train as Garmin dominate the lead-out, but the sprint underlines the important of Renshaw. Garmin make a mess of the final handover for Farrar, just as Renshaw muscles his way through to drop Cavendish off in the centre of the road with 200 metres to go.

Cavendish doubles up in similar fashion. It’s a messy, bendy final kilometre, and Garmin look to have taken control, even getting a slight gap in the final 500 metres. But their chosen sprinter Robbie Hunter finds himself in the wind too early, and looks over to see Renshaw calmly dragging Cavendish up. Hunter jumps on but by then there’s nothing to be done as Cavendish jumps on the inside and shows everyone another clean pair of heels.

This one is overshadowed by Mark Renshaw’s disqualification from the race for headbutting Garmin’s Julian Dean in the final kilometre. The Australian had become territorial and, seeing it himself, Cavendish decides not to risk getting boxed in and hits out from distance. It’s a searing sprint, quickly opening up multiple bike lengths. Petacchi and Farrar start to make up ground towards the end but it’s win number three.

Another final-day victory on the Champs Elysées, another absolute annihilation. His lead-out is again more a case of dropping him on a rival’s wheel, and he comes through the Place de la Concorde chicane in a good position. Like the previous year, the side-on shot is staggering, as Cervélo look to be leading out until Cavendish pings into the frame and out into the lead as if propelled by an elastic band. The difference in speed is striking and, although he wins by fewer bike lengths than 2009, it’s nevertheless a show of complete superiority.

After another difficult start to the Tour, Cavendish once again makes an emphatic statement. Unhappy with the nature of the opening stages, this one doesn’t even really suit him, with a messy false flat sprint among puncheurs like Philippe Gilbert, José Joaquin Rojas, and even Geraint Thomas. Cavendish hits out early, coming from towards the back of the group around the right-hand side to hit the front and nab it on the line. You can almost sense Gilbert’s shock when he looks over.

Cavendish is out to reassert his dominance after being beaten by Greipel on stage 10 – his first direct defeat in a Tour de France sprint (previously, the sprints he hasn’t won, he hasn’t really contested). It’s a messy run-in in the rain but Renshaw calmly guides Cavendish into position and he makes no mistake. Greipel hits out on the left but has to dive back into Cavendish’s slipstream and is unable to exit it.

Cavendish wins on the Champs Elysées for a third year in a row, this time in the green jersey, winning the points classification for the first time. It’s far less one-sided than his previous two in Paris, as Edvald Boasson Hagen nearly matches his initial kick, but it caps another big Tour de France haul, making him the first rider to win at least four stages in four straight Tours. The tally stands at 20.

A big change as Cavendish, wearing the rainbow jersey after his victory at the Worlds in Copenhagen, moves to Team Sky following the disbandment of HTC. There are question marks surrounding the level of support he’ll receive, with no room for his old sprint train in a team geared around Bradley Wiggins. Still, Cavendish hits the ground running, winning in the Tour’s first sprint. Lotto lead it out for Greipel but Cavendish bides his time in the headwind and pips the German to the line.

This is another of the ones that ranks right up there in the pantheon of Cavendish victories. He’s been next to anonymous in the intervening sprint stages, as Sky put all their eggs into defending Wiggins’ yellow jersey, but he asks for a chance here, and takes it. He actually gets a helping hand from Wiggins, and then from Edvald Boasson Hagen, but there is still so so much more to do. Luis-León Sánchez and Nicolas Roche are still away from the break in the final 400 metres, and Cavendish sprints long into the slipstream before pinging out to the right-hand side of the road. The likes of Matt Goss and Peter Sagan are left trailing by metres.

Despite never sitting comfortably within his team, the Tour nevertheless has a perfect ending for both parties. For the third year in a row, Cavendish triumphs on the Champs Elysées on the final day, his rainbow jersey adding to the sense of occasion. What’s more, he’s led out by none other than the yellow jersey, Wiggins, who hits the front along the Rue de Rivoli before Boasson Hagen does the final handover. A long sprint, but Cavendish prevails for one of the victories he still looks back on most fondly to this day.

Despite the perfect end to the previous year’s Tour, Cavendish leaves Sky after just one season and joins the Belgian squad now known as Deceuninck-QuickStep. He strikes 11 times before the Tour, including five at the Giro, but struggles in the opening stages with illness and crashes. In Marseille, he has a dedicated lead-out at his service once again, and Niki Terpstra, Matteo Trentin, and Gert Steegmans combine to drop him off. It’s a controlled sprint in that aero position to hold off Sagan and Greipel, while Boasson Hagen sucks the slipstream for second place.

One of the more atypical Cavendish wins, highlighting his versatility. After a string of near misses in the bunch sprints, he goes and wins from a group of 10. Crosswinds shatter the bunch and Cavendish, who has to produce an all-out sprint just to make the front echelon, enters the final kilometre planted on the wheel of Sagan. QuickStep use their numerical advantage, with Chavanel leading the way before swinging off early, at which point Sagan finds himself in the wind and starts to move aside. Cavendish pounces, and never looks back.

After the heartbreak of crashing out on home soil on the opening day of the 2014 Tour, Cavendish endures a tough time of it in 2015. Andre Greipel – a rider he once termed a winner of ‘shit small races’ – dominates the sprints, but Cavendish comes out on top in Fougères. It’s a late sprint on an uphill drag and, after taking the wheel of Kristoff, he leaps onto Greipel when the German opens up, before bursting around on the inside.

Another major milestone in the Cavendish career as he pulls on the yellow jersey for the first time. There are question marks surrounding his off-season move from QuickStep to Dimension Data, the African team who were previously a second-division outfit. But they are wiped away on the opening day with a massively impressive victory. He looks over his shoulder, watching out for Marcel Kittel, but takes the initiative when Sagan jumps, tracking the world champion left then right, before moving to the front with the staying power to hold off Kittel.

After losing the yellow jersey on the uphill stage 2 finish, Cavendish strikes again on stage 3 in one of the closer finishes of his career. Renshaw is up there with him but he decides to plant himself on Greipel’s wheel and manages to spend a good six seconds in the slipstream as the German opens his sprint. When Cavendish hits the wind, it’s a slog, as he draws alongside the German but can’t muscle past. They lunge for the line, Greipel raises his arm, but the photo finish give the celebrations to Cavendish.

The 2016 Tour saw some of Cavendish’s most intelligent sprinting and his third stage win in six days is no different. In a twisty and chaotic finale in Montauban, Cavendish once again plants himself on a German wheel. This time it’s Kittel, and he stays well hidden as his rival is forced early into the wind. He hits out with 200 metres to go and moves to the front, sealing it with a bike throw as the others start to come back. It takes him clear of Bernard Hinault into outright second on the all-time stages record.

Cavendish joins the 30 club and bags his first four-stage haul since 2011. QuickStep make a better fist of this lead-out but Cavendish once again manoeuvres his way into prime position. There’s footage from the Orica car, where DS Matt White asks who’s on Kittel’s wheel. When he’s told it’s Cavendish, he instantly states: “Cav’s gonna win then.” It’s another pretty close one, and Kittel complains he’s cut up, but Cavendish is in dreamland.

Mark Cavendish wasn't even supposed to be at the 2021 Tour de France. He is added as a late replacement for Sam Bennett who had suffered a knee injury in training. Stage 4 looks as if it won't even be a sprint, with solo attacker Brent Van Moer holding a 22-second lead with 2km to go, but the Belgian's hopes are dashed when the Alpecin-Fenix team of race leader Mathieu van der Poel bring him back with just 250m to go.

Cavendish, starting his acceleration, has to stop pedalling for a moment to get around Van Moer but then launches again on the slight uphill final 200m, holding off Nacer Bouhanni (Arkéa-Samsic) and Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Fenix). After a five-year drought and so close to retirement last year, it is understandably an emotional moment for Cavendish, who dissolves into tears of relief, disbelief and joy.

All eyes are on Cavendish as the race heads to the scene of his first-ever Tour de France stage win, and he delivers the romantic storyline. His team dominate the closing kilometres and he follows lead-out man Michael Morkov to the last 500 metres but the Alpecin-Fenix lead-out train storms through. Cavendish jumps onto the wheel of Jasper Philipsen, then hits out around the right of the Belgian's lead-out man Tim Merlier before coming back alongside and getting out in front. He raises his hands to his head to replicate the celebration from 13 years ago.

Cavendish makes it three, and recognises that he really didn't need to do much at all. He is given a lead-out that would rival that of the HTC years, with Julian Alaphilippe, Mattia Cattaneo, Kasper Asgreen, Davide Ballerini, and Michael Morkov all peeling off in turn. Morkov only has to hit the wind from 250 metres out, and Cavendish himself only starts sprinting from inside 150 metres. Jasper Philipsen and Wout van Aert are there, but he almost can't lose.

Patrick is a freelance sports writer and editor. He’s an NCTJ-accredited journalist with a bachelor’s degree in modern languages (French and Spanish). Patrick worked full-time at Cyclingnews for eight years between 2015 and 2023, latterly as Deputy Editor.

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