Deceuninck-Quick Step boss Patrick Lefevere has reportedly offered Mark Cavendish a one-year contract extension – but there is no guarantee of a place at next year’s Tour de France, where the 36-year-old is tied with Eddy Merckx for the most stage wins.
Het Nieuwsblad reports that while there is an offer on the table, talks between the team and the sprinter have stalled, with the parties said to be far apart on financial terms.
Cavendish rejoined his former team on a 12-month contract last December on a deal that was understood to be at the UCI minimum wage, topped up by personal sponsorship he brought with him.
The current deal on offer from Deceuninck-Quick Step – which will change its name for next season to Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl – is reported to be based on a bonus structure.
One stumbling block is thought to be the question of participation in the Tour de France, where Fabio Jakobsen – winner of three stages and the points competition last month at the Vuelta a year after his horrific crash at the Tour de Pologne – may be the team’s lead sprinter.
Cavendish, who at April’s Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey got his first wins since the Dubai Tour in February 2018, got a late call-up for this year’s edition of the French Grand Tour after Sam Bennett withdrew.
He took four stage wins, his first in the race since he landed a similar haul in 2017 to pull him level with Merckx on 34 wins apiece; but while he won the points competition, he finished third on the closing stage in Paris, denying him the outright record.
> Tour de France Stage 13: Mark Cavendish wins again to equal Eddy Merckx's record
In the meantime, Cavendish, who finished third in Sunday’s final stage of the Tour of Britain in Aberdeen, has been named in the Great Britain line-up for the men’s elite race at the UCI Road Cycling World Championships in Belgium.
> Vintage Cav ... furious Manx Missile rages at Tour of Britain motorbike rider
Surprising to whom? Not to cyclists in Scotland ("We asked the driver, but they said they couldn't remember"). Nor those served by WMP (was it -...
I think the Irish case may well have (in whole or part) have been following the reasoning from English cases.
just trying to increase the size of the market for road traffic defences he defends
Fixed it.
I'm tempted by these only because of the nifty magnetic mounting system onto the Bontrager helmet I recently purchased. But I currently have a...
Was Yvette Caster's conversion from yet another anti-cycling journo to sense on the road to Damascus?
I imagine it will be the Ultegra C36 carbon wheels and a Deda Superzero bars/stem like in Europe. Personally I would probably pick the standard RCR...
The most effective method would be to levy a charge on parking spaces per annum on locations you want to make better use of, for example city...
Hmm, I don't know of any country myself that has hard-to-produce plates.
I'll obviously want to spend a minute to inflate a helmet every time I get on my bike, so like 2 to 5 times on a typical shopping trip....