Sir Mark Simon Cavendish (born 21 May 1985) is a Manx retired professional cyclist. As a track cyclist he specialised in the madison, points race and scratch race disciplines; as a road racer he was a sprinter. He is widely considered one of the greatest road sprinters of all time.
In his first years as an elite track rider, Cavendish won gold in the madison at the 2005 and 2008 UCI Track Cycling World Championships riding for Great Britain, with Rob Hayles and Bradley Wiggins respectively, and in the scratch race at the 2006 Commonwealth Games riding for Isle of Man. After failing to win a medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics he did not compete on track again until 2015, subsequently winning his third UCI Track Cycling World Championships title with Wiggins in the madison in 2016, and an individual silver medal in the omnium at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
As a road cyclist, Cavendish turned professional in 2005 and achieved eleven wins in his first professional season. From 2008 until 2024, Cavendish won 35 Tour de France stages, putting him first on the all-time list, contributing to a third-highest total of 55 Grand Tour stage victories. He won the men's road race at the 2011 Road World Championships, becoming the second male British rider to do so after Tom Simpson. Cavendish has also won the points classification in all three of the grand tours: the 2010 Vuelta a España, the 2011 and 2021 Tour de France and the 2013 Giro d'Italia. In 2012, he became the first person to win the final Champs-Élysées stage in the Tour de France in four consecutive years.
Cavendish won seven Grand Tour stages in 2013, one in 2015 and four in 2016. This included a win on stage one of the 2016 Tour de France, claiming his first Tour de France yellow jersey. He crashed with Peter Sagan on stage four of the 2017 Tour de France, forcing him out of the race. Cavendish continued producing good results until August 2018, when he was diagnosed with Epstein–Barr virus. Before his diagnosis, Cavendish was able to compete in the 2018 Tour de France but was disqualified after not making the cut-off time on stage eleven. He returned to the Tour de France at the 2021 edition, winning four stages and his second points classification. In 2024, he claimed his 35th Tour stage win to break the overall stage victory record, previously shared with Eddy Merckx.
In the 2011 Queen's Birthday Honours, Cavendish was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) "for services to British Cycling." He also won the 2011 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award with nearly half of the votes going to him out of a field of ten nominees. In June 2024, Cavendish was awarded a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the 2024 Birthday Honours for "services to cycling and charity work." At the end of the year he was also awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award.
Cavendish was born in Douglas, Isle of Man, the son of David, a native of the Isle, and Adele from Yorkshire, England. He began riding BMX at an early age, racing at the National Sports Centre in Douglas.
He joined his local club in Douglas at the age of nine with his determination soon becoming apparent. "He didn't like losing", said Dot Tilbury, his former coach; "He started to win and often he would lap the other riders in the field".
He said: "I was always riding a bike, getting dropped in little races." "My mum would laugh at me, and I said it was because all my mates had mountain bikes, so I asked for a mountain bike for my thirteenth birthday and got one. The very next day I went out and beat everyone." It was at that time that Cavendish met British cyclist David Millar at a race on the Isle of Man, who was an inspiration to him. Cavendish worked in a bank for two years after leaving school to earn enough money for an attempt at a professional career.
He gained a place as one of the first six riders selected for British Cycling's Olympic Academy for junior riders in 2003 having almost been rejected because of his relatively poor performance in stationary bike tests. Coaches Rod Ellingworth, John Herety and Simon Lillistone lobbied British Cycling Performance Director Peter Keen to include him because of his potential. Although he initially struggled because of a lack of fitness, he recorded his first win in senior competition in March 2004; in the Girvan Three Day race he managed to latch back onto the lead group after being dropped over a climb before winning the finishing sprint ahead of Julian Winn. Whilst at the academy, he won two gold medals at the 2003 Island Games.
Cavendish progressed well at the academy. Ellingworth said, "Cav kind of liked it" when asked about the rigid rules and "dictatorship style" of the academy. The junior riders lived on £58 a week and financial management became a part of life at the academy as well as cooking and cleaning. Cycling Weekly described the academy as "a boot camp style training regime" controlled by Ellingworth, who, after finding out they had skipped a three-hour training ride, made the juniors complete four hours hard training at night.
He won gold in the madison with Rob Hayles at the 2005 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles. They had not raced together before as Hayles' usual partner, Geraint Thomas, had crashed during training a few weeks earlier—but finished one lap ahead of the field to claim the gold medal, followed by the Dutch and Belgian teams, Cavendish's first world title. Cavendish also won the points race at the UEC European Track Championships.
Cavendish turned professional in 2005 with Team Sparkasse, a feeder squad for the T-Mobile Team. During this time, he rode the Tour de Berlin and the Tour of Britain. He remained with the team into 2006, winning two stages and the points and sprint competitions in June's Tour de Berlin. He rode for the Isle of Man on the track at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, riding the scratch race. He lapped the field with three others: England's Rob Hayles; Ashley Hutchinson of Australia; and James McCallum of Scotland. Hayles then led him out for the sprint to win gold for the Isle of Man.
His success at the 2006 Tour de Berlin led to him being a stagiaire with the T-Mobile Team from August until the end of the season. His best result on the road was in the Tour of Britain where he came second twice and third once, and won the points classification. He signed an initial two-year contract to join the team full-time from the 2007 season.
His breakthrough came at the 2007 Scheldeprijs race in Belgium, which he won. He went on to win stages at the Four Days of Dunkirk and the Volta a Catalunya leading to his selection for the Tour de France. He crashed on stages one and two and abandoned the race on stage eight as it reached the Alps. Although he had taken two top-ten placings he was unhappy not to have had a top-five placing. Cavendish took his eleventh win in early October at the Circuit Franco-Belge. Among the wins were three in UCI ProTour events—two in the Volta a Catalunya and one in the Eneco Tour.
In 2008, Cavendish returned to the track for the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Manchester. Cavendish was brought in to partner Bradley Wiggins in the madison, as Hayles failed a routine blood test, and was subsequently banned. At around halfway through the race they appeared to be out of contention, with their closest rivals all gaining a lap. With thirty-five laps left to race, Wiggins launched an attack which helped them reach the field ten laps later. They took the lead due to the superior points they had collected in the sprints. They held on to win the gold medal, finishing with nineteen points, ahead of Germany on thirteen.
On the road, Cavendish won his first stages of a Grand Tour with two victories in the Giro d'Italia and four stages in the Tour de France, the first of which was on stage five. He won also stages eight, twelve and thirteen. After stage fourteen, Cavendish abandoned the Tour to concentrate on the Olympics in Beijing. He paired with Wiggins in the madison, and as the reigning world champions, they were favourites for the gold medal but finished ninth. Cavendish felt Wiggins had not performed to the best of his ability in the madison. The rest of his season was successful, with a total of eleven further race wins, including three each at the Tour of Ireland and the Tour of Missouri where he won his only points classification of the season. At the Tour de Romandie, he won the opening time trial, beating compatriot Wiggins and emphasising his short-distance time-trial abilities.