{"id":237267,"date":"2025-11-01T05:46:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T05:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/237267\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T05:46:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T05:46:13","slug":"mark-cavendish-brands-cycling-cleanest-sport-in-the-world-and-says-idol-lance-armstrong-lost-more-than-anyone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/237267\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Cavendish brands cycling \u201ccleanest sport in the world\u201d and says \u201cidol\u201d Lance Armstrong \u201clost more than anyone else\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Cavendish has claimed that he would not have been able to achieve what he did in professional cycling \u2013 including 35 Tour de France stage wins, a world road race title, and victory at Milan-Sanremo \u2013 if the sport had still been plagued by the systemic doping practices of previous eras.<\/p>\n

Speaking on TalkSport<\/a> as part of a series of radio and television appearances to promote his new autobiography, Believe, Cavendish admitted that he once viewed Lance Armstrong as an idol and that the disgraced Texan was \u201cvery good\u201d to him during his first few years in the peloton.<\/p>\n

However, the retired sprinter also claimed that, since the plethora of doping scandals that culminated in Armstrong\u2019s lifetime ban in 2012, cycling has transformed into \u201cone of, if not the, cleanest sport in the world\u201d due to its proactive attempts to address and combat the use of performance enhancing drugs.<\/p>\n

During the interview, Cavendish, who retired last year after winning a record-breaking 35th stage win at the Tour de France, was asked if cycling has fully recovered from the Armstrong era, 12 years after the American was stripped of his seven Tour titles and banned for life for orchestrating what USADA described as the \u201cmost sophisticated drugs cheating programme in sports history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MarkMark Cavendish wins record 35th Tour de France stage, 2024 Tour de France, stage 5 (credit: Zac Williams\/SWpix.com)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think so, yeah,\u201d the Manx sprinter replied. \u201cWe\u2019ll never get away from our past as a sport, but cycling puts the time, effort, and money into combat doping. There\u2019ll still be people who are caught for cheating and stuff like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s not saying, \u2018I\u2019m a cheat, so I\u2019m going to be a cyclist\u2019. That\u2019s not how it works. It happens in all sports. It happens in entertainment, business.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnywhere there’s money we gain, people will cheat. If you put the time, the effort, the money into catching a cheat, you will do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s what cycling did on a big level and it had a damaged reputation. Don\u2019t get me wrong, it had a damaged reputation because there were people cheating.\u201d<\/p>\n

>\u00a0Why was Mark Cavendish riding with Lance Armstrong this week?<\/a><\/p>\n

The former world champion was also asked if he ever viewed Armstrong, who Cavendish raced against during the former US Postal leader\u2019s ill-fated comeback of 2009 and 2010, as an \u201cidol\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was growing up,\u201d Cavendish said. \u201cAnd Lance was very good to me when I was young.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think obviously Lance gained a lot more than anyone else from the sport. So likewise, he lost a lot more than anyone else in the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Move podcast panel, Mallorca (credit: Elizabeth Kreutz)<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s interview isn\u2019t the first time Cavendish has cited Armstrong\u2019s personal support for and encouragement of his fledging career.<\/p>\n

In his first autobiography At Speed, published in 2013 \u2013 the same year Armstrong confessed his doping to Oprah Winfrey \u2013 2011 world champion Cavendish described the 1993 rainbow jersey winner as \u201cmesmeric\u201d.<\/p>\n

And, while describing the \u201cbitterness\u201d of learning that Armstrong\u2019s dominance was all a carefully orchestrated charade, Cavendish acknowledged at the time that the \u201crace to expose him at times resembled a witch-hunt\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, speaking on TalkSport, the 40-year-old claimed that the changes that took place in the sport following Armstrong\u2019s highly publicised demise were instrumental in influencing the direction of his career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell you, I could not have done what I did in the sport if cycling was how it was in the past,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwenty years later, I’m answering questions about it, which will always be the case. But it’s actually nice to be able to talk about how I see it and how I’ve experienced it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that, fundamentally, I believe I\u2019ve raced in one of, if not the, cleanest sport in the world \u2013 because they do the stuff to combat doping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cavendish\u2019s comments about doping were made on the same day that the UCI announced that Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe rider Oier Lazkano has been provisionally suspended due to \u201cunexplained abnormalities\u201d in his biological passport<\/a>, which were found during the Spaniard\u2019s three-year stint at Movistar between 2022 and 2024.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old becomes the latest rider to fall foul of the governing body\u2019s biological passport system, which attempts to spot patterns of doping by tracing a rider\u2019s blood values and biological profile over time, in a bid to spot anomalies indicative of drug use, and has been let go by his Red Bull-Bora team.<\/p>\n

>\u00a0\u201cThe Tour de France is bigger than cycling. And we\u2019ve done it\u201d: Record-breaker Mark Cavendish\u2019s greatest ever Tour de France stage wins<\/a><\/p>\n

Elsewhere in his interview with TalkSport, Cavendish reflected on his groundbreaking 19-year career, which saw him win 165 races in total, including 35 Tour stages, two green jerseys, 17 Giro d\u2019Italia stages, and the 2011 world title, cementing himself as the greatest sprinter the sport has ever seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty happy with it. Don\u2019t get me wrong, after 19 years, I was well old at the end,\u201d he said, before turning to that historic afternoon in Vulbas last July, when he sprinted to his 35th victory at the Tour<\/a>, finally breaking the record he had shared with Eddy Merckx.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won everything I could win and how many sports people get to say they finished on a high, at the top?\u201d Cavendish continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cI nearly didn\u2019t. There were a few years I nearly didn\u2019t. I nearly had to just stop. It nearly killed me doing it, but I was able to kind of do that. Physically I was old. I was nearly 40 when I won, and that\u2019s old for a cyclist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MarkMark Cavendish wins record 35th Tour de France stage, 2024 Tour de France, stage 5 (credit: Zac Williams\/SWpix.com)<\/p>\n

The 40-year-old also discussed his incredible return to the sport’s pinnacle in 2021, when he overcame years of mental health struggles and a prolonged spell recovering from Epstein\u2013Barr virus to get back to the Tour and win four stages for Deceuninck-Quick Step (as a late call-up), hauling himself level with Merckx\u2019s 34 and winning his second green jersey in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally, you take a couple of months off and you recover from. Mine was a bit misdiagnosed, and it ended up putting me on my knees for a couple of years,\u201d he said, discussing his troubles with Epstein-Barr.<\/p>\n

That illness, Cavendish says, took a severe toll on his mental health, the sprinter describing himself as a \u201cnightmare to live with\u201d during that period, which saw him muster only two victories between 2017 and the start of 2021, his time at the top seemingly over.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think any sportsperson, if you can\u2019t do your sport at a high level, that\u2019s your life, it\u2019s how you make your living, it\u2019s everything you are as a person, if you can\u2019t do that, it\u2019s not going to be easy,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m lucky I had a supportive family and network around me.<\/p>\n

“The hard thing then was getting a job, I couldn\u2019t get a job after that, I had done everything I\u2019d done, and there are people who had never won a bike race, and likely never win a bike race, get a job before me, who had won all these bike races, because I had been sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking about his decision to retire, his place in Tour and cycling history secured, Cavendish concluded: \u201cThe work that came into it, from being old, the physicality goes. The work you have to put in, the time away from home, starving myself, being hungry all the time, and the toll it took on my mental health, which I think people are talking about now, was quite big.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Cavendish has claimed that he would not have been able to achieve what he did in professional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-237267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}