\nA proud return to his roots<\/p>\n
Known as the Manx Missile, Cavendish was knighted in the King\u2019s Birthday Honours in 2024 and later received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award. Yet, he said that beyond accolades, what makes him happiest is spending more time back home.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been great to be back loads this year,\u201d he said. \u201cMy heart\u2019s always there. To be able to spend time there again, I just love it. It\u2019s beautiful. Waking up and seeing the sea on a morning is something that has always been with me from growing up there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Isle of Man\u2019s affection for its most famous cyclist was marked when the raceway at the National Sports Centre, where he trained as a child, was renamed in his honour in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get the sense that everyone is proud of what I\u2019ve done and they say \u2018oh, great race last week\u2019, but it\u2019s just like that, I\u2019m just Mark. That\u2019s where I feel most like \u2018just Mark\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cavendish described the island as a place of calm and community, where he can feel at ease after years of global competition. \u201cI feel chill on the island,\u201d he said. \u201cLife kind of slows down. Everyone is friendly and welcoming. It\u2019s a small community and when you grow up there\u2026 it\u2019s very nice, it\u2019s very safe and very wholesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Belief in the next generation<\/p>\n
Despite retiring from competition, Cavendish remains deeply connected to cycling and believes the Isle of Man has all the ingredients to produce new champions. \u201cAs long as I can remember, there were 200 kids down there on a Tuesday night, and there\u2019s still 200 kids down there on a Tuesday night,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
The former world champion hopes to continue seeing the three legs of the Manx triskelion (which form the Isle of Man flag) represented in races worldwide.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve definitely got the best tools and the best place to ride a bike, so there shouldn\u2019t be any excuse not to,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m the biggest believer that if you put the hard work into anything you want to achieve and you believe enough, then you can do what you want to do. I was never, physically, the best cyclist by any means, but I worked and I believed,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A proud return to his roots Known as the Manx Missile, Cavendish was knighted in the King\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-244892","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\/244892","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=244892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}