Isle of Man Man

 Second doesn't mean anything in cycling.

Mark Cavendish 

Perspective.

Pop quiz - what is your favorite sport, and who is its all-time biggest star?

Hold that thought. We'll get back to it.

Bicycle racer and sprinter Mark Cavendish crashed out of his (supposedly) final Tour de France on Stage 8 in a most ignominious, entirely big race way. That is, on a flat road with the peloton cruising along at nearly thirty miles per hour, someone did something stupid way ahead of him. When the Slinky© snapped unexpectedly he had nowhere to go. Over the bars, onto the pavement, into the ambulance. In professional bike racing, it happens that fast.

We sat stunned. The day before, Mark came within a bike's length of the latest reckless driver on Stage 7, a pure sprinter's stage. A younger Cav would have left the lesser (and erratic) eventual winner in his wake. It wasn't to be then, and won't be now.

Over the course of the quarter century Dr. Greer and I have watched the Tour, we have seen perhaps four generations of dominant sprinters. There was Mario Cippolini in the early 90s. Eric Zabel won the Green sprinter's jersey on into the 2000s. Robbie McEwan's blinding speed and fearlessness led the peloton in the 20-teens and then came Mark Cavendish. Each, in their own way, was a force to be reckoned with, a fierce presence among the hard, brave men who sprint their bikes.

Cav was the antithesis of the bold strutters. He wears his heart on his sleeve - cries shamelessly in interviews, drops the occasional F-bomb and, is uncharacteristically candid ("How do you know a bike racer is lying?" asks commentator Bob Roll rhetorically. "His lips are moving.") when asked about tactics or objectives. He is an old school racer in a modern game dominated by skinny climbers.

A fractured clavicle, which damaged a previous surgical repair to the same bone (an old screw is loose, which seems appropriate for a sprinter). His Tour de France career is over.

He remains tied with Eddie Merckx, a racer from a bygone era so talented that he won not just the yellow jersey (five times) signifying Tour de France victory, but in 1969 he won every jersey awarded at the time - overall, climber and combativity. His nickname is "The Cannibal." He is the greatest bicycle racer of all time, perhaps the most dominant individual professional athlete ever.

Mark Cavendish is tied with Eddie at 34 Tour de France stage wins.

But. wait! His Team - Astana - offered him a contract extension to ride in the 2024 Tour. 

The Manx Missile. See you next year, mark.