What's next for Mark Cavendish?

What’s next for Sir Mark Cavendish? It’s a question cycling fans have been asking themselves for years. The first whispers came in October 2020, when on a torrid day out at Gent-Wevelgem, the teary-eyed Manxman said he had just finished “perhaps the last race of my career”. Fans gasped. What will he do now?

Hindsight, of course, tells us it wasn’t his last race. There would be the comeback Tour de France in 2021, when he won four stages and drew level with Eddy Merckx’s all-time stage win record. Then came the national title he won from the breakaway in 2022, the Giro d’Italia stage win in Rome in 2023, and the unfortunate crash out of the Tour later that summer. He was scheduled to retire at the end of the season. Was that the last we’d see of Cavendish? What would come next?

Again, hindsight tells us there would be more. Another year with Astana-Qazaqstan, another crack at the Tour, and another stage win. Finally, the outright record was his. Fans, content with their hero's achievements, could watch him hang his wheels up with pride.

That moment came this November, at the Singapore Criterium, where Cavendish sealed off his career with a ceremonial victory. “I’m really looking forward to what the rest of my career holds, just not on the bike,” he said afterwards. And so, once again, the question is rippling around cycling: what’s next, Mark?

The answer, fans will be glad to hear, appears to remain within the sport. Asked about his retirement by The Guardian this month, Cavendish said: “Obviously I’ve still got a lot of life left, and I still have to provide for my family, and so I think that’s going to be in cycling team management. I know the sport and I know how to build a team and that’s where I’m heading. It’s exciting.”

It’s an idea the 39-year-old first revealed in October. Then speaking to Men’s Health he explained he’d known for "the past few years" what he wanted to after his road career.

“I’ve set the wheels in motion,” he said, pun likely unintended. “I want to stay in management in the sport, I still love it. I brought a lot of people to this team [Astana-Qazaqstan] over the past two years, and I know what it takes to be successful. I’ve been building up to the moment I’m not racing.”

It’s true that Cavendish has slowly been constructing an empire within Astana-Qazaqstan. The first hint of that was the signing of Vasilis Anastopoulos as the team's head of performance in October 2023. The Greek coach had previously worked with Cavendish at Quick-Step, where he was instrumental in guiding the sprinter to his comeback Tour in 2021.

More recently, two of Cavendish’s close friends have joined the team’s staff, both on his recommendation; former Hour Record holder Alex Dowsett will be a performance engineer from 2025, while Cavendish’s fellow Manxman Pete Kennaugh will take on his first WorldTour gig as a sports director.

So does this mean Cavendish will help manage the team in 2025? Well, probably not.

Speaking to Cyclingnews, Alexander Vinokourov, the manager of the now named XDS Astana, confirmed the Brit won’t be part of the team’s staff next season.

“We have a good relationship with Mark, he was very important to us,” Vinokourov said. “But sometimes it’s not easy to find an exact role for someone in the team and that was the case with Mark.

“Mark didn’t want to just be an ambassador for the team, Mark wanted to be part of the decision-making structure, but that wasn’t possible yet.”

Yet…? “We still have a good relationship and we’ll see what happens later. Maybe in the future,” the team boss added.

What this points to is a potential job within XDS Astana, but not next season. It’s a solution that likely suits Cavendish, too. An original member of the British Cycling academy in 2004, the Manxman joined his first road team in 2005, and raced for 19 relentless years. It's probably time for a break.

So dedicated was Cavendish's approach to cycling, that his family life has been fleeting in recent years. His coach, Anastopoulos, once joked that he had spent more time with the sprinter than his own wife had. Now, Cavendish told The Guardian, he’s looking forward to sharing the “beautiful intensity” of family life with his wife.

“Peta was with me in Singapore, and we were in Japan the week before. Those two weeks are the longest we’ve ever spent together, just us two, and I want to do more of that with her,” he said

His social calendar is starting to fill up for the year, too. In January, he’ll travel to Australia to join in the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Santos Tour Down Under. He has also committed to running the Paris Marathon with his brother in April. “I will always ride my bike, but I want to run now,” he told Men’s Health.

So, if you're hoping to see the Manx missile in a team car in 2025, don't hold your breath. He's got a life outside of cycling to enjoy first, one he now leads as a Knight Commander. Rest assured – if Vinokourov's hints are anything to go by – Cavendish could be back in the thick of it in a not-so-distant future.