Pro bike: Mark Cavendish's Cervélo S5

Now, we've seen some pretty special paint jobs this year, especially during the Tour de France, but Mark Cavendish's Cervélo S5 must take the win.

Not only does that faded green look the absolute business, it's also highly technical. Cervélo's head designer used a special paint – the same stuff used on F1 car engines and brakes – that's only 10 microns thick.

On any bike, glossy paint can add in the region of 200g to a frame, so the fact that Cav's paint job only adds a reported 10g to the overall weight is astounding. Plus, throw in some green dye and you get that stunning faded finish.

The S5 is Cervélo's aero bike, which Cav will always use, despite the newer and lighter Cervélo R5 having been released. In the sprint finishes, though, the aero benefits of the S5 outweigh the weight benefits of the R5.

Cavendish's S5 is fixed with the team's standard componentry, except for one major exemption – Cav refuses to run the Rotor chainrings on his bike.

The Dimension Data team are required to use them, but he's opted for a Shimano chainset.

For this reason, he runs Shimano Dura-Ace 9000 chain rings with a blacked out SRM power meter. The whole setup is rounded out with a rather bling gold chain.

Elsewhere, though, the bike is business as usual. It's Enve products top to tail, and his wheels are Enves SES 4.5 models, 48mm deep on the front and 56mm deep on the rear. His handlebar is 42cm wide and the stem is 130mm long.

Of course, we didn't get to see the Manxman for long at this year's Tour following an incident on stage four which saw him crash out the race and Peter Sagan get removed.

This year Cav was hoping to take Eddy Merckx's all time stage win record of 34.