Legendary British athlete Mark Cavendish to retire with record that may never be broken
British cycling legend Mark Cavendish has confirmed that he will retire on Sunday after his final race in Singapore.
The Tour de France Criterium will mark the end of an illustrious career on two wheels for Cavendish, who earlier this year broke the record for the most stage wins at the Tour de France, with 35.
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Posting on Instagram, he wrote: "Sunday will be the final race of my professional cycling career.
"I am lucky enough to have done what I love for almost 20 years and I can now say that I have achieved everything that I can on the bike. Cycling has given me so much and I love the sport.
"I've always wanted to make a difference in it and now I am ready to see what the next chapter has in store for me." He added: "Thank you, everyone, for all the support, always."
Widely regarded as one of the greatest ever road racers, the 'Manx Missile' does have form for changing his mind on retirement. On two previous occasions he planned to retire, but a sense of unfinished business kept him in the saddle.
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Born in the Isle of Man, he started out riding BMX at a young age at the National Sports Centre in Douglas, with his former coach Dot Tilbury noticing his dislike for losing, as that he often lapped others in the field.
Two years after finishing school, he worked at a bank to save money in order to fund a professional career and by 2005 he turned that dream into a reality when he joined Team Sparkasse. He joined the T-Mobile team in 2006 and spent five years there, during which time he claimed a first Tour de France victory over stages five, eight, 12 and 13.
2011 was a landmark year for Cavendish. He was awarded an MBE in for 'services to British cycling' and won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
Cavendish abandoned the tour at stage 14 to focus on the Olympics in 2012 as him and Bradley Wiggins were favourites for gold, despite eventually finishing ninth.
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Team Sky welcomed him in 2012 for a year until he moved Omega Pharma-Quick-Step. He has then had stints at Dimension Data, Bahrain–McLaren and Deceuninck–Quick-Step before joining the
Astana Qazaqstan Team last year, with whom he will end his 19-year long career.
He has been open about his mental health struggles in a Netflix documentary released last year, suffering with clinical depression after being diagnosed with Epstein-Barr virus in April 2017.
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He has won the points classification in all three tours; Tour de France, Vuelta a Espana and Giro d’Italia, whilst he also became the first person to win the final Champs-Elysees stage of the Tour de France for four consecutive years.
The 39-year-old also finishes his career with one Olympic silver medal and three World Championship Madison titles.
This summer, he was awarded Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2024 at Birthday Honours for services to cycling and charity work.
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