Mark Cavendish is facing the end of his Tour de France dream after Britain’s sprint king was brutally axed from this year’s race.
The Manx Missile was left “devastated” after being omitted from Team Dimension Data’s eight-man squad – against the advice of their own performance director Rolf Aldag.
At 34, Cavendish - whose 30 career stage wins leave him only four behind the all-time record of 34 – now looks destined to miss out on overhauling Belgian legend Eddy Merckx.
He will not take part in cycling’s blue riband event - which starts in Brussels on Saturday - for the first time since 2006 and Le Tour’s main sponsors, who revere Cavendish, are thought to be unimpressed.
Last year, Cavendish missed the time cut on the day fellow Brit Geraint Thomas went into the Yellow Jersey at La Rosiere ski station. But he won the enduring respect of race director Christian Prudhomme and French crowds by refusing to climb off his bike and completing the stage an hour after Thomas crossed the line.
It was later revealed Cavendish had been suffering from glandular fever, and although he had been plagued by the debilitating Epstein Barr virus in recent years, at face value Dimension Data’s axe looks a poor decision.
After completing an altitude fitness camp in Austria, where he felt he had proved his fitness, Cavendish raced in the British national road race at the weekend, finishing 22nd but quietly confident his form was about to peak for Le Tour.
Although his best placing this year was third on stage four on the Tour of Turkey in April, the latest data suggested his form was comparable with 2016 – when he won the leader’s Yellow Jersey after a sprint finish on the Grand Depart to Utah Beach in Normandy.
Cavendish was crestfallen when team principal Doug Ryder inexplicably vetoed Aldag’s recommendation – the equivalent of Ed Woodward overruling Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United - and now it is unlikely that he will add to the last of his 30 stage wins in 2016.
He had won 20 of them by 2011, the year he won Le Tour’s celebrated Green Jersey for king of the sprinters.
Dimension Data added dreadful public relations to the controversy of dropping Cavendish by failing even to mention his omission, or acknowledging his contribution to the race’s history, in their initial press release.
Legends deserve better – and they later updated the party line, saying: “Selection for our Tour squad was a highly competitive process and one in which a panel weighed up the options provided to us not only by Mark but all of our riders.
“As you would expect among a selection panel, there were a number of different preferences of the final squad make-up with our principal, Doug Ryder, making the final decision.”
Fellow Brit and two-time stage winner Steve Cummings, 38, made the cut.
Cavendish’s place was taken by Italian sprinter Giacomo Nizzolo, who won a stage at the Tour of Slovenia.
