Kazakhstan’s Astana aims to collect one green jersey after another with new signing Mark Cavendish

Thirty-eight-year-old British cyclist Mark Cavendish has transferred from the prestigious Belgian Quick Step to the Kazakh Astana Team before this season. It was a very difficult transfer for him, as he admits on the Astana team website that he liked Quick Step and had the perfect conditions for his spurter qualities.

“I wanted to make some good money at the end of my career and it was the Kazakh professional worldour stable that gave me that. In addition, they gave me bonuses in my contract, which is a huge motivation for me,” Cavendish says.

What do these bonuses include? The Kazakh Astana stable, whose founder is Alexander Vinokurov, former world champion and “Kazakh results great” of the Peace Race, has never won a major competition. While it has several stage wins in the Tour de France or Giro d’Italia, it is missing any yellow, pink, white or green jerseys from the big races.

Mark Cavendish, on the other hand, is a great rival of Peter Sagan for the green jersey for the best rider in the points competition – he has won thirty-four stages in the Tour de France and twice won the green jersey for the winner of the points competition in 2011 and 2021.

The native of Douglas on the Isle of Man won sixteen stages and the green jersey once at the 2013 Giro d’Italia. In addition, he was also successful in the points competition at the third edition of the Vuelta a España.

Astana aims to collect one green jersey after another with new signing Mark Cavendish

Now the Kazakh Astana stable has come up with a proposal that any green jersey Cavendish takes to the finish line of a major stage race will be duly rewarded. New teammate Alexey Lutsenko, who has already managed to win a stage at the Tour de France or at the Vuelta a Espana, was world road race mass start champion under-23 and also won, for example, the very well-attended stage race Tour of Oman.

He confirmed to the Astana website that Cavendish is capable of winning the points competition at all the important stage races: “Mark Cavendish can win the green jersey at the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana. He’s a great sprinter and he can do it on the climbs. Plus, he’ll have our whole team around him, focused on fighting for the points jersey.”

Cavendish, 38, will be supported in Astana by the likes of Denmark’s Michael Morkov, Italy’s Simone Velasco and the Netherlands’ Cees Bol. And they are all ready to be the water carriers in the sprints on the premiums and at the finish.

How many green jerseys will Cavendish win for himself and his Astana Cycling Team this year? One thing’s for sure, the more the merrier, and if they’re from the Tour de France or Giro d’Italia, his bank account may start filling up with American dollars in his final professional season.

Source: Astana Qazaqstan