Cavendish eyes Tour record & Red Bull set to join peloton

Mark Cavendish’s final season in the saddle is already off to a winning start, and his bid for Tour de France history promises to be one of the main storylines of this campaign.

But with cycling’s profile continuing to rise after its Netflix treatment, the arrival of a blue-chip sponsor which has dominated another sport adds even more intrigue to the season ahead.

Cavendish could finally break the Tour’s stage wins record he shares with the legendary Eddy Merckx this year.

The Manxman’s response to his Tour of Colombia stage win earlier this month was simply that it was “nice to get the [sprinting] train dialled” for his Astana-Qazaqstan team, hinting at the bigger goals ahead.

Cavendish’s programme gets under way in earnest this week at the UAE Tour, where several of the world’s best meet for the first time this season.

What could be most exciting about his final, final comeback, is none of road cycling’s current top sprinters have been able to dominate as Cavendish himself once did, save for Jasper Philipsen reaching his peak during last year’s Tour de France.

However Cavendish’s season unfolds, it is likely to be one of the stories that transcends a growing sport.

Cycling’s rise is thanks, in part, to a second series of Tour de France: Unchained on Netflix, which features the ups and downs of teams across the peloton in the same way Drive to Survive does for Formula 1.

But also because a team synonymous with motorsport’s top table, Red Bull, is set to join the peloton.

The German Bora-Hansgrohe team is in its own right one of the sport’s better financed outfits, but it looks likely to form a partnership with the soft drinks giant which could see the creation of another super-team – assuming Austria’s version of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission approves the deal.

Very little detail of the collaboration is known at the moment, but as anyone in the F1 paddock will tell you, Red Bull tend to do sport properly.

Dutch giant Jumbo-Visma dominated last year, winning all three Grand Tours – the Tour de France with Jonas Vingegaard, the Giro d’Italia through Primoz Roglic and Vuelta a Espana for Sepp Kuss.

This season, as Visma-Lease A Bike, they are expected to once again be the team to beat, alongside the Emirati-financed, Tadej Pogacar-led UAE Team Emirates.

Cycling’s other super-team is, of course, Ineos Grenadiers: owned by British billionaire businessman and cycling fan Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who – despite finding a new toy in Manchester United – is dedicated to maintaining a substantial influence on the peloton, according to the team’s new boss John Allert.

“We have a fixed budget; it hasn’t gone down,” says Allert, who takes over as managing director from Rod Ellingworth – the position once held in such glittering fashion by Sir Dave Brailsford.

Allert added: “There’s a lot said about it, but we believe we have a budget that will enable us to win Grand Tour races – whether or not the budget is the largest in the sport, I’m no longer clear. It is everything we need it to be.”

Allert, 55, refuses to rule out one of his own riders winning the Tour de France. But he has been around long enough to know the smart money is still with last year’s winner Vingegaard.

In 2023, the Dane finished a staggering seven minutes ahead of Slovenia’s much-admired Pogacar, leaving both on two Tour career wins each, and locked in an annual battle for the sport’s top honours no other riders can get near in France.

That is not to say there cannot be some big moments for British riders on the road this year.

Josh Tarling is one of Ineos’ most exciting prospects, having won the British and European time trial championships in his first year of World Tour competition in 2023.

He sees the scrutiny of being in a top team with high expectations to regain its status at the top as motivation.

“It’s exciting. I can be a part of the next time [Ineos] win the Tour. We’re in a good place now; there’s loads of young riders, we’re all performing, all good friends. All the building blocks are there.”

Tarling turned 20 last week, and is already excelling in the discipline against the clock for which former British Tour winners Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins were among the sport’s greatest.

No one is saying Tarling will win the Tour just yet, but Ineos have always blooded their champions gently and without expectation – including 2018 winner Geraint Thomas, another time trial specialist.

And 2024 will see the return of another former Ineos Grand Tour winner, Tao Geoghegan Hart.

His brilliant 2020 Giro d’Italia victory often feels overshadowed by the Covid crisis, and his many subsequent injuries.

But the 28-year-old now heads up the harlequin-styled American Lidl-Trek team as one of their brightest prospects for success at the Tour.

Pogacar himself must surely have a less-demanding programme this year after proclaiming he was “dead” during last year’s Tour capitulation.

Many in the peloton feel the balance between race fitness and recuperation is the hardest to strike in the modern era.

Maybe riders, trainers and team bosses alike should ask Cavendish for some advice – at 38 he is still winning, and seems to know better than anyone.