Mark Cavendish Dimension Data

or a bunch sprinter to cross the line first, a certain alignment of the stars has to take place. The legs have to be good, of course, but that’s not all. Gradient, wind speed, the effectiveness of your leadout train and outwitting the wayward manoeuvres of your rivals and their team-mates are all high up there on the list.

However, as Britain’s fastman-in-residence Mark Cavendish found out this spring, not contracting glandular fever is another, fairly salient factor in being able to win bike races.

Despite a late start on the road due to his winter sixday racing commitments, the Manxman recorded a series of promising results (one win, two podiums and victory in the points classification) at the Abu Dhabi Tour in February. His rivals there included Marcel Kittel, André Greipel and Caleb Ewan — practically a roll call of the world’s best sprinters.

The next month, however, he began to suffer the fatiguing symptoms of the Epstein Barr virus — the virus that leads to glandular fever. He didn’t race from Milan-san Remo on March 18 till the Tour of Slovenia in mid-june.

After a number of weeks of total rest he began training slowly again and returned to competition with a promising second place on stage four in Slovenia, followed by an ‘outside the time limit’ finish at the British Road Championship, it seems Cavendish’s form is still, unsurprisingly, not quite nailed down.

But with bunch sprint opportunities aplenty in France this July, and three weeks during which to improve, write him off at your peril.