Mark Cavendish's race programme was redrawn when he was laid low by a bout of illness in late March, but a victory on the Tour de Hongrie last week suggested that he is picking up momentum again as he builds towards the Tour de France.
Astana Qazaqstan manager Alexandre Vinokourov will certainly hope so. His team has collected just six victories so far in 2024, two of them from Cavendish, and they languish in 21st place in the UCI rankings, a situation that leaves them facing a battle to avoid relegation from the WorldTour at the end of next season.
Cavendish claimed Astana's lone WorldTour win of 2023 when he sprinted to victory in Rome on the final day of the Giro d'Italia, and he has become even more of a focal point for his second, and likely final, season at the team, with Michael Mørkøv and Davide Ballerini added to the roster to buttress his sprint train.
After starting his season with a victory at the Tour Colombia, Cavendish raced at the UAE Tour and Tirreno-Adriatico before illness ruled him out of the Classics. Following a training camp in Greece with his coach Vasilis Anastopoulos, Cavendish added the Tour of Turkey to his programme before racing and winning in Hungary last week.
"With Mark, we're always confident, but it's good for him and the team to win," Vinokourov told Cyclingnews on the Giro d'Italia. "All sprinters are all the same – they all want to win.
"Mark had some mechanical issues in Turkey, and I think without that, he might have already been able to win there. But in any case, he's got a good level and now he just needs to work some more towards the Tour."
Vinokourov insisted that Cavendish's illness had not unduly delayed his preparations for the Tour, where he is chasing a 35th stage win to claim sole ownership of the record he currently shares with Eddy Merckx. The next phase in Cavendish's Tour buildup is an altitude training camp, while Vinokourov confirmed that the Tour de Suisse is now likely to be his final race before the Grand Départ.
"The legs always follow the head. Your head has to be right first, so in that sense, it's important that Mark is so happy on this team," Vinokourov said. "Now he just has to work hard in the last part of his approach to the Tour. He needs to work on his climbing a bit first and then he'll do a little bit of work on his sprint before the Tour.
"The Tour is the goal, and we'll do our best to be successful there. I think he's capable of doing it. He needs to find a good moment and a good day, and we've got a good lead-out around him with Cees Bol and Mørkøv."
Cavendish announced his retirement on the second rest day of last year's Giro, only to reverse the decision after breaking his collarbone in a crash on the Tour. Mørkøv, for his part, told Cyclingnews in February that he reckoned the goal of a 35th Tour stage win was merely an "excuse" for Cavendish to prolong his career. Vinokourov downplayed the idea that Cavendish might opt to continue racing into 2025, but he hinted that he could join the team's management structure.
"I don't think he's going to continue for another year. He could stay with the team, that's for sure, but not as a rider," Vinokourov said.
"After his crash last year, I just said to Mark, 'A rider like you can't finish like this.' If he'd made it to Paris, then ok, he could have said, 'I gave it a go and I didn't manage it…' But I think he could have won a stage on last year's Tour – maybe even in Paris because we saw that Jasper Philipsen didn't win there."
WorldTour relegation
Vinokourov was speaking in Avezzano ahead of stage 9 of the Giro d'Italia, where his Astana team suffered another blow with the news that Alexey Lutsenko had abandoned the race due to illness. In his absence, Lorenzo Fortunato, currently 7th on GC, will lead the line.
The team is in dire need of UCI points, and Vinokourov knows that Astana is locked in a grim battle to retain its top-flight status when the current promotion-relegation cycle comes to an end following the 2025 season.
Astana had previously been on the brink in 2015 when the UCI requested its exclusion from the WorldTour following a spate of confirmed doping cases on the team. The UCI Licence Commission subsequently closed its proceedings against Astana and the team remained in the WorldTour.
A decade on, Astana could lose their WorldTour status for sporting reasons, and it seems clear that they will need to sign stage racing talent this summer to help their chance of avoiding relegation. Aleksandr Vlasov had been linked with a possible return to the team, but he now appears likely to extend with Bora-Hansgrohe.
"I'm certainly looking for a rider who can get good results in stage races, but it's not easy to find riders like that today. The market price is very high, they take up a lot of a budget," Vinokourov said.
"We still have more than a year to go. We're still hopeful, we're not just going down to lay arms just like that. We're not worried for next year, we're working on riders. We're looking for a rider who can ride for GC. And we have riders ourselves, like Fortunato, who could make a big step, too."
