"I’d love to have a team in the future": Mark Cavendish hints at future ambitions beyond retirement

Mark Cavendish retired at the end of last season after a 20-year long career that crowned him as the best sprinter ever. Having smashed the Tour de France stage wins record and with over 160 professional wins, the Manx missile has been enjoying a well-deserved retirement.

So far, he has not accepted any role within the cycling world, as he has been enjoying his time back at home, the Isle of Man. However, that might change in the future and not in a way we might expect.

In a recent interview to Financial Review, Cavendish has opened the door to the possibility of creating or running his own cycling team in the future, suggesting that the sport’s current structure leaves significant room for improvement.

Cavendish said he believes cycling could benefit from approaches used in Formula One, a sport he admires not only for its competition but for its business model. He also suggested that current riders may be missing opportunities to enhance their own earning potential, saying that some professionals “aren’t doing enough to make money in their own right.”

A cycling team structured in a different way than usual could become a breath of fresh air for the sport, and Cavendish thinks he is the man for that task. “I’m just objectively stating there is a gap in the market to fill and I’d love to have a team in the future that is a lot more along the lines of other sports. Obviously with cycling there are differences – you don’t own a stadium. But there are revenue streams that aren’t being properly utilised.”

Cavendish declined to provide specifics about whether he actually plans to take over an existing team, or rather start a new one, but he was clear about his long-term drive. When asked about the next 40 years of his life, he answered: “I’ll never stop. Peta is a mother who has looked after the kids a lot on her own. She can decide to go to sleep.

“I can’t sleep until both ends of the candle are burnt. Then I crash. Bang. The best thing about cycling is it made me tired. I’ll never stop.”

Reflecting on his own career, Cavendish was blunt about how contracts are awarded. “Something I never really understood with cycling is that you were more likely to get a contract based on quite subjective decisions,” he said.

He added that the sport’s economics create a paradox that do not always reward sporting success. “Sport is run 100 per cent on media spend. So even though I was winning as I got older, I couldn’t get contracts because I don’t think any team wanted the risk of me not winning.”

Cavendish argued that his marketability should have remained clear even as he aged. After all, only one man has ever got more professional victories than him (Merckx 279 vs. Cavendish 165). “I don’t mean this arrogantly but that didn’t make sense because I was always valuable to a sponsor. There were a lot more people making a benefit from sweat in my last years than I was.”