Mark Cavendish

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 the greatest road sprinter of all time, and in 2021 was called "the greatest sprinter in the history of the Tour and of cycling" by Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France.

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.