Cavendish wins BBC Lifetime Achievement award

British cycling great Sir Mark Cavendish will be honoured with the Lifetime Achievement award at BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

The 39-year-old retired earlier this year having won a record 35 Tour de France stages – the last coming in Saint Vulbas in July.

Cavendish, who is from the Isle of Man, won 165 professional races and rounded off a stellar career with victory at the Tour de France Criterium in Singapore in November.

He will be presented with his award during the 2024 BBC Sports Personality of the Year show on Tuesday.

“It’s such an amazing feeling – what an honour,” said Cavendish.

“I’ve been riding for 20 years and I’ve done everything I can so to be awarded this is something very, very special.

“I’m very fortunate I’ve done everything I wanted to do, and proud that’s more than many other people have done as well. I always dreamed of having my name alongside those greats I grew up watching.”

Cavendish’s roll of honour includes the road world title in 2011, 17 stages of the Giro d’Italia and three of the Vuelta a Espana.

On the track, he won omnium silver at the 2016 Olympics and was a three-time madison world champion.

Cavendish’s journey has not been straightforward.

Early in his career, he showed promise as a BMX and mountain bike rider before becoming part of a British Cycling set-up that went on to dominate the track events at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.

His pro career on the road began in 2005 in a feeder team for T-Mobile, and he won his first Tour stage in 2008 for Team Columbia.

But from 2017 he was struck by injury, illness and depression – and the Briton feared his career could be over when he failed to win a race during 2019 and 2020.

A remarkable turnaround brought four more Tour stage wins – and the overall green jersey – in 2021 during a second spell with the Belgian Quick Step team.

Once again, a tumultuous year followed, and Cavendish and his family were the victims of a violent robbery at their home in 2021.

He did not secure a place at the 2022 Tour and his future in cycling again looked in doubt before Astana-Qazaqstan pounced at the last minute for 2023.

They took Cavendish to a 14th – and what should have been final – Tour but a horror crash in which he sustained a broken collarbone abruptly ended his race and left him determined not to allow that to be his final farewell.

And so it was that in Saint Vulbas earlier this year, he powered to the line in trademark fashion to beat the long-standing record set by Belgian great Eddy Merckx.

The ‘Manx Missile’ ended his career fittingly with victory in Singapore in November – a month after he was knighted.

Cavendish was the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2011.

In 2023, the Lifetime Achievement award was presented to Liverpool, Celtic and Scotland football legend Sir Kenny Dalglish.