With his record-breaking 35 Tour de France stage wins, Mark Cavendish confirmed his status as the greatest male sprinter of all time. But his greatness is not reducible to his Tour wins, nor to a total number of wins – it’s far more nuanced than that. It’s about the specific nature and characteristics of his wins, how he developed an instinct for getting in the right position at exactly the right time. Choosing his best wins, then, was never going to be an easy task.
Cavendish has 165 individual victories on his palmarès, and each and every one of them undoubtedly played a part in the UK cycling boom in the early 2010s. Just ask Dot Tilbury, Cavendish’s first ever coach, about the excitement and inspiration his career has sparked among the young cycling community on the Isle of Man. This is part of greatness too – the impact a sportsperson has on their home nation and region.
