Mark Cavendish has launched a triple-pronged attack for 2016, with an Olympic medal far from his only target this season. The Manx Missile also wants to pull on the Tour de France yellow jersey and win the road World Championships for a second time.
The Manx Missile has already claimed an Olympic medal is the missing piece in his illustrious palmares and will look to further his bid for a place on the plane to Rio 2016 when he competes for Great Britain at the UCI Track World Cup this month.
But track success isn’t the only major target Cavendish has set for 2016, with ambitions of success on the road too as he prepares for his debut season with Team Dimension Data.
A flat opening stage to the Tour de France, from Mont Saint-Michel to Utah Beach, will present another possible shot at wearing the yellow jersey – another rare missing piece from his CV – while the UCI Road World Championships should also be a sprinter’s race in Qatar.
“There’s some nice targets at the end of the year,” Cavendish told the BBC. “But I think they are too big targets to say if I don’t win them it’s a failure.
“I’d like to wear the yellow jersey at the Tour. I think I’m good enough to wear the yellow jersey at the Tour. I’d like to win [at] the Olympics, because I think I’m good enough to win [at] the Olympics. And I’d like to win the World Road Champs. I think I’m good enough to win the world road champs.
“But the thing is, if I don’t win any of them it’s not a failure because they’re the biggest things you can try to do in cycling.”
Cavendish missed out on pulling on the yellow jersey – the only Grand Tour leader’s jersey he hasn’t worn – after being held up behind a crash on Corsica in 2013 and then crashing out himself in Harrogate in 2014.
After the Tour kicked off with a time trial in 2015, the peloton’s sprinters will have another shot at maillot jaune this year with Cavendish likely to go up against rivals, Marcel Kittel, who was the man signed to replace him at Etixx-QuickStep, and Andre Greipel.
That will be followed, should he be selected, by the Olympic Games – with his chances of riding the omnium in Rio likely to be clearer after the Hong Kong event on January 16 and 17.
And Cavendish is then likely to be among the forerunners in Qatar, on a largely flat desert course, as he looks to add to his 2011 world title.
He knows what it takes to win in Qatar too, having won four stages and the overall classification in his last appearance at the Tour of Qatar in 2013.
And he admitted, while all three are the dream, to win any one would be a huge achievement.
“If I win one of them I’ll be happy but I’m going to try and win all three,” he concluded.
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