Cavendish crushed by Tour omission

Mark Cavendish has been left devastated after missing out on selection for the Tour de France.

The 30-time Tour stage winner will not be on the start line of the Tour for the first time since making his debut in 2007 after being left out of Team Dimension Data’s eight-strong team.

It is understood Dimension Data head of performance Rolf Aldag wanted to select Cavendish for the Tour, but was overruled by team principal Doug Ryder, who instead made the final call on a squad which includes Britain’s Steve Cummings, 38, and Dane Lars Bak, 39.

The decision has come as a shock for the 34-year-old Cavendish, who has been plagued by the Epsteinbarr virus in recent years but believed he had proved his fitness and felt that he was in the sort of form which saw him win four stages in 2016. Cavendish raced in the British national road race on Sunday, finishing 22nd, after completing an altitude camp in Austria last week which was a specific part of his preparation for the Tour.

Though Cavendish has been short of results on the road this season, he has deliberately limited his racing to focus on training blocks designed to bring him to peak form for the Tour. The results seemingly persuaded Aldag, but not Ryder, that Cavendish should head to Brussels this weekend. While Ryder’s goal is to make the South African-registered team capable of challenging in the general classification in the near future, the team’s best GC rider, Louis Meintjes, is also out with a fractured wrist.

The team’s squad announcement did not mention Cavendish, but a later statement said: “Selection for our Tour squad was a highly competitive process in which a panel weighed up the options provided to us not only by Mark but indeed all of our riders. As you’d expect among a selection panel, there were a number of different preferences of the final squad make-up with our team principal, Doug Ryder, making the final decision on it.”