Mark Cavendish

All-time sprinting great Mark Cavendish made history in 2024 when he broke Eddy Merckx's longstanding Tour de France stage wins record, raising the bar to 35 victories at that one Grand Tour. A road and track World Champion, Cavendish turned professional in 2005 with the German Continental team Sparkasse, the feeder squad for T-Mobile, and took his first pro road win, a stage of the Tour of Berlin, that year. Over the next 18 years he would pile up 165 individual wins on the road. The 39-year-old, born May 21, 1985 in Douglas, Great Britain, announced he would retire at the end of the 2024 season.

Cavendish moved into the senior professional categories with T-Mobile in 2007 and claimed his first major win, the Scheldeprijs the same year. His first of 53 Grand Tour wins to date then came in the 2008 Giro d’Italia, with a further four being captured at the Tour de France.

Cavendish clinched his first and to date only Monument in March 2009 at Milan-Sanremo, before adding another four Giro d’Italia stage wins and six Tour de France stages, including the last on the Champs Elysées that summer. In 2011, Cavendish also claimed the World Road Championships title in Denmark, in a bunch sprint and the Tour de France points jersey.

Cavendish’s Tour de France stage tally grew steadily higher until he crashed out on the first day of the 2014 race. In 2016, he finally led the Tour for the first time in his career and snapped up another four stages. Illness, crashes and injuries sidelined Cavendish, and he missed the Tour de France in 2020 when it was held in late summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

2021 marked a return for the British sprinter to the QuickStep programme, having raced with them from 2013-2015. Along with his haul of four stage victories at the Tour he also took the points classification. Those four wins brought his Tour stage win total to 34, equalling the all-time record held by Eddy Merckx. Just days after winning the 2022 British Road Race championship, Cavendish found out he would not be on the QuickStep roster for the Tour. He had already added another stage win at the Giro and a victory at Milano-Torino, but no chance to break the Merckx record in France.

In 2023 he took his firepower to Astana Qazaqstan, where he won for a 162nd time in his career with a dash to the line on the final stage of the Giro d’Italia in the centre of Rome. On stage 8 of the Tour de France, he crashed out with a broken collarbone. He had declared earlier in the summer that he would retire, but later confirmed one more year with Astana in an attempt to ride the Tour for a 15th time. His final Tour de France stage triumph came on stage 5 in Saint-Vulbas in 2024. Also a two-time Tour green jersey winner, Cavendish was awarded a knighthood at Windsor Castle by Prince William in October, the honour among the most prestigious available in the United Kingdom.

Key results

🥇35x stages, Tour de France 2008-2024
🥇 2x Points classification, Tour de France 2011, ‘21
🥇17x stages Giro d'Italia 2008-23

🥇3x stages, Vuelta a España 2010

🥈 Olympic Games Omnium 2016
🥇 World Road Championships 2011

🥇 World Track Championships, Madison 2005, '08, '16
🥇3x stages, Tirreno-Adriatico 2009, ’12, ‘14

🥇3x stages, Tour de Suisse 2009, ‘14

🥇 Milan-San Remo 2009

🥇 Scheldeprijs 2007-08, '11

🥇 Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne 2012, '15

🥇 National Road Race Champion 2013, ‘22

🥇 Points competition, Vuelta a España 2010

🥇 Points competition, Giro d'Italia 2013