(Paris) “It’s not over yet”: Mark Cavendish, who had announced his retirement for the end of the season, will finally continue one more season to try to beat the record for stage victories in the Tour de France , indicated his Astana team on Wednesday.
“It’s not over yet,” said a first brief video posted by the Kazakh team on social media. It was then the Briton himself who confirmed in a second video that, at the age of 38, he was going to embark on an eighteenth professional season in 2O24.
“I talked to the kids and asked them what dad should do. And they said, “Go on, that’s not even a question. But just one more year, eh,” explained the man from Man, considered by his peers as the best sprinter of all time.
Surrounded by his family, Cavendish, father of four children, announced during a press conference in May during the Tour of Italy that he was going to bow out at the end of 2023.
But that was before he retired, due to a broken collarbone in a fall, during the 8th stage of the Tour de France where he was aiming to make a little more history.
The “Cav”, who has 162 victories to his name, aspires to beat one of the most coveted records in cycling, that of the number of stage victories on the Grande Boucle which he currently shares with Eddy Merckx (34 successes).
Refusing to let his career end due to injury, Cavendish will return to the Astana team led by his former teammate Alexandre Vinokourov who reached out to him last winter after the disappearance of the B team.
“The first thing “Vino” said to me after I retired from the Tour de France was: “why not continue for another year?” At first I said no, no. But I just love being on a bike,” Cavendish commented on Wednesday.
“It won’t be easy to beat the record he shares with Eddie Merckx, it would be a historic achievement, but we have this opportunity and we must seize it,” Vinokourov commented in a statement.
For this, Cavendish will receive the reinforcement of a luxury pilot fish in the person of the Dane Michael Morkov, who announced a week ago his departure from the Soudal-Quick Step team where he had already raced with the “Cav ” in the past.
On Wednesday afternoon, Astana confirmed the arrival of the 38-year-old Danish veteran, Olympic champion in Tokyo on the track and who plans to defend his title at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on the American.
“I am delighted to reunite with my former teammate Mark Cavendish to chase further victories for him and Astana,” Morkov commented in a statement.
