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Last night, Simon attended an event in London and did his best private investigator impression, leading us down a path of everything makes sense or wild speculation or both, perhaps? You decide for yourselves…
I’ll hand you over to Simon…
If you’re a long-term reader of road.cc, you’ll know that we don’t exactly go into the minutiae of who is going where during transfer season. But you’ll also know that we keep a keen eye out for where certain riders may be headed when they are finding a new team.
And while he may no longer be the hottest property around, we know that many of you will be interested in where Mark Cavendish ends up next season, and whether he’ll get a crack at that 35th stage win to move him ahead of Eddy Merckx.
Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl boss Patrick Lefevre made it clear earlier this week that Cavendish – winner of the points jersey last year and four stages to draw him level with Merckx, but dropped this year for Fabio Jakobsen – no longer figures in the team’s plans.
And much has been said and written about the British champion’s future since then.
Did we get a glimpse of where that may lie last night? Well, perhaps.
We’ve had a few discussions in the road.cc office in the past fortnight about where he might end up, but most teams we think of has either an overall contender, or a sprinter on its roster for next year.
Bar one, and it was at a party to celebrate that team’s participation in the Tour de France, and its women’s team’s upcoming debut at Le Tour Femmes, that we spotted Cav yesterday evening at an event held by kit supplier Rapha in partnership with Palace Skate.
Few team bosses are as shrewd business-wise as EF Education-EasyPost’s Jonathan Vaughters, and with a stage victory and polka dot shine from Magnus Cort, the US-registered team is having a great Tour.
So, seeing Cavendish yesterday evening at a function hosted by Rapha, the team’s kit supplier, has got our thinking caps a bit overheated, perhaps – though bear in mind that our collective brains at road.cc have been overloading the past couple of weeks about where he might end up.
But think about it. A team that even 12 months from now may not have a top-3 GC contender, but which understands the PR value to sponsors that would come from Cavendish winning just one stage of next year’s race?
Perhaps we’re reading too much into him being present last night at an event hosted by the company that supplies the team’s kit.
But could we also be looking at smoke and correctly finding the seat of the fire?
One thing we do know is that we’d love to see him ride next year’s Tour de France … and to grab that record-breaking 35th stage win.
What do you reckon? Would you like to see Cav is EF pink next July?
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