Mark of Success RAIN. GOLD. PAIN. NOTHING STOPPED HIM.

By overtaking Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 Tour de France stage wins, Mark Cavendish sealed his icon status. We reveal how the Manx Missile achieved such astonishing success over two decades – and what the rest of us can learn from his approach

Mark Bailey

SO HE DID IT. 35 WINS Twenty-eight years after the bike-obsessed Mark Cavendish started doing junior races on the Isle of Man, inspired by the posters of Robbie McEwen and Mario Cipollini on his bedroom wall, and 16 years after he won his first stage at the Tour de France, in Châteauroux in 2008, the Manx Missile surpassed Belgian Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 stage wins with a sensational showing at the 2024 Tour. The 39-year-old sprinter – whose 165 career wins also include 17 stages of the Giro and the 2011 world road race title – has experienced moments of ecstasy and pain, invincibility and despair. But with passion and resilience, he fulfilled his childhood dream to become a cycling icon. Over the years, I have interviewed Cavendish many…

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Cycling Plus (Digital) - 1 Issue, September 2024

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