ANALYSIS: THE BEST SPRINTER EVER?
Procycling examines Cavendish’s palmarès to see how he compares to other top sprinters
I s Mark Cavendish the greatest sprinter ever to grace a finishing straight? Usually such questions asked with close proximity to the subject and their exploits obscure a century and more of cycling history behind them. But with Cavendish, a talent so singular and driven, it has produced a palmarès of breadth and depth that bears consideration before he’s even retired. Some have already made up their minds. In 2012 after he won on the ChampsÉlysées for the fourth year in a row and in the rainbow jersey – which was a first –
L’Equipe proclaimed that the Manx Missile was just that: the best sprinter there ever was. We look at Cavendish’s career in raw numbers and pick some close comparisons.
First, we should look at the key markers in Cavendish’s 12-year professional career. He has 30 Tour stage wins, 15 in the Giro d’Italia and three at the Vuelta a España. He has won the points jersey competition in all three grand tours, as well as 16 points jerseys in lesser races. His opening stage victory in the 2016 Tour on Utah Beach in Normandy, meant he has now spent spells in the three major tours’ leaders’ jerseys too. He has a monument win – MilanSan Remo in 2009 - and five wins in the Flemish semi-Classics most suited to sprinters: Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and Schelderijs. He was British national champion in 2013. His achievements in Team GB colours stand him apart: a world road race rainbow jersey and three titles in the Madison. He is Olympic silver medallist in the Omnium, achieved right on the back of his excellent 2016 Tour. In total, he has 146 professional road victories. The central plank of Cavendish’s palmarès is undoubtedly his performances in the Tour de France and that is the race we most associate with the Manxman. In the four golden years between 2008 and 2011, he won four, six, five and five stages, before they started to thin out. In 2010, aged 25, he equalled Freddy Maertens’s stage wins tally of 15 at the race. By that point, his HTC team had turned the lead-out into an art form and Cavendish’s electric acceleration frazzled his rivals. Cavendish proved he was the best sprinter the race had ever seen when he took his 23rd Tour stage win in 2012. It surpassed André Darrigade’s haul of 22, taken between 1953-64. Darrigade is often a point of comparison with the Manx rider: they were both sprint stage specialists who excelled at the Tour. Darrigade outflanks Cavendish in that he has two Tour points jerseys to Cavendish’s one, plus a Giro di Lombardia title, which is well beyond Cavendish’s realm of course.
After his chastising 2014 season, Cavendish predicted his win rate would slow in the second half of his career. When he returned just one Tour stage win in 2015, that prediction looked like it had set in post haste. But in 2016 he hit another rich seam and he took four more wins. His stock rose sharply as he overtook Hinault’s stage haul of 28 and he revived the idea that he could beat Eddy Merckx’s stage record of 34. For years, that figure looked like it would ossify, a number that would forever be beyond reach in modern racing because the margins between riders are much narrower and the competition tougher these days. Yet Cavendish now threatens it. It’s worth noting that 16 of Merckx’s Tour stage wins came in time trials – and often in short split stages or prologues. In terms of mass start wins at the Tour, Cavendish was the best there ever was some time ago.
However factoring in all the grand tours clouds the issue a little. Among the all-time grand tour stage winners, Cavendish’s 48 means he is currently tied on third with Alessandro Petacchi and nine behind Mario Cipollini, on 57. Merckx ploughs ahead on 64.
Cavendish’s record brings a comparison with the two Italians. For one thing they’re not so far removed from one another in history. Cavendish’s career nominally overlapped with both: Cipollini was making an exhibition of himself at Rock Racing in 2008 while Cav was cleaning up at the Tour. Petacchi rode as Cavendish’s lead-out for 18 months at Quick-Step. The range of wins is also similar: all three have a Milan-San Remo victory and Cipollini, like Cavendish, was also a road world champion. Cipollini’s spread of victories on the road is slightly better: he is a three-time winner of GentWevelgem and won E3 Harelbeke in 1993. Cavendish insists a comparison with Cipollini on Gent-Wevelgem is unsound because the race is very different to when the Italian won in bunch sprints in the early 90s (his third win, in ’02 was from a small break). Cavendish’s best chance at GentWevelgem came in 2008, when he finished 17th in the bunch sprint. But what value a Classic compared to the Tour? Cavendish won the green jersey. Cipollini never made Paris.
THE CURRENT COMPETITION
Cavendish transformed the sprinting hierarchy during his second year at the Tour. The top five of the final stage of that 2008 Tour reads like a who’s who of great, if ageing, sprinters. The top five were: Gert Steegmans, Gerald Ciolek, Oscar Freire, Robbie McEwen and Thor Hushovd. Cavendish had beaten them all earlier in the race before departing for the Beijing Olympics. All bar Ciolek were at least five years older than Cavendish. Every year during Cavendish’s ChampsÉlysées hegemony, the cast beneath him evolved but never really settled. In 2013, the new brigade finally arrived with consistency and force. Both Kittel and Greipel bettered him in Paris that year. The years 2013-14, Kittel outmanoeuvred Cavendish at every turn and the German never lost a true sprint
His stock rose sharply as he overtook Hinault’s Tour stage haul of 28 and revived the idea he could beat Merckx’s record of 34
against him. In 2016, the picture was more mixed, mostly because of Cavendish’s unexpected Tour revival.
The most direct active contemporary to Cavendish is André Greipel. Their win tally is very tight: at the time of writing, Greipel is just one ahead of Cavendish on 147, but in grand tours Cavendish is far ahead: Greipel has 22. Kittel is currently on 19.
What’s missing from the Manxman’s palmarès? Purists might quibble with his Gent-Wevelgem assessment. As recently as 2014 the race ended in a large sprint. Paris-Tours, which finishes on the Avenue de Grammont, the third most revered boulevard associated with sprinters after the Champs-Élysées and Milan-San Remo’s Via Roma, is also missing. His best finish there was sixth in 2016. The race’s faded prestige means it has probably lost its primacy. Another measure is the green jersey. The prize was set up to reward the first place finisher in 2011 and the Manxman obliged, but it’s his only one.
Where Cavendish outflanks most of his rivals are his performances in national colours and particularly on the track. The 2011 world road race champion also has three track world golds and an Olympic silver medal. Combining track and road successfully during the course of a career is a rare achievement and usually those that are trackies turn into rouleurs like Bradley Wiggins. One comparison is Rudi Altig, the German all-rounder who was the IP world champion in 1960-61. He may have won the Vuelta in 1962, but he maintained a fierce sprint that helped him take the green jersey at the Tour and 18 grand tour stages. He didn’t have an Olympic medal though.
In 2016, in the immediate aftermath of his loss to Sagan in the Worlds in Qatar, Cavendish said that he didn’t have any “burning aspirations left. I’ve done everything I can, really.” Another four Tour stages would give lie to that statement.