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

Cavendish returned for the 2018 Tour but missed the time cut on stage 11 and was eliminated. An explanation as to why came a month later when he was diagnosed with the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes glandular fever. It had rinsed him of the energy needed for elite competition and training.

A period of “total rest” followed, but when an uncharacteristically subdued Cavendish did return he suffered some bizarre crashes. First came a huge somersault when clattering into a traffic island during the gruelling Milan-San Remo. Then he came to grief behind the commissaire’s car before the Abu Dhabi Tour had even officially begun.

A change of teams from Dimension Data to Bahrain-McLaren in 2020 didn’t help, and by the end of a Covid-affected season he declared through tears at the Gent-Wevelgem classic in Belgium that he had contested “perhaps the last race of my career”.

There would have been no shame in retiring then. Cavendish was already the second most successful at winning stages in Tour history, a green jersey winner and world road champion in 2011, an Olympic silver medallist and a three-time world champion on the track.

But he did not step away. And his old boss Lefevere was watching.

“The situation of more than a year ago, he looked desperate on the TV,” the Belgian says.

“I saw it and I thought: ‘No, that cannot be true.’ I called and he came to my office and we found a last-minute deal; everything went like a train.”

It’s fair to say only a few watched the first real signs he was back to his best.

At a miserably overcast Tour of Turkey in April 2021 – which virtually no riders wanted to attend because of spiking coronavirus cases everywhere – Cavendish won four of the eight stages. The joy and relief was clear, even if he was up against those considered second-rate opposition on the World Tour.

“He was there and he won his first stage and we had a Facetime call and he started crying,” remembers Lefevere.

“It was the best moment. I got off the phone and said ‘Now we’re going to drink Dom Perignon’, because then I understood [he was back].”

Two months later came another big twist.

“Bennett was always the sprinter for us,” Lefevere continues. “But then his injury came in June. At short notice we put Mark in at the Tour of Belgium. He was in London and flew over in a helicopter two hours before the start, and he won a stage.

“When it was clear Bennett couldn’t do the Tour either, I called Mark and he said: ‘Patrick, you cannot think what I am thinking. My suitcase has been ready for two weeks and I’m nervous like a junior.’ That’s when I understood he would be doing a great Tour.

“When he won [his] first stage, I think that was one of the biggest emotions I ever saw in 20 years of my team, with everybody. And then the miracle happened; one stage became four and then the green jersey.”