The sports personality favourite

Mark Cavendish is overwhelming favourite to pick up the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award tomorrow. And in my opinion, any other outcome would be a travesty. Cavendish is imperious, arguably one of the greatest sportsmen in the world at present and one of the most remarkable sportspeople the UK has ever produced.

Cavendish is unbeatable, and I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. Given an equal chance against even his most accomplished opponents, he will win every time. Cycling road races are broadly split into three varieties–flat sprint races, mountain races, and rolling, hilly races. Riders specialise on one type, and Cavendish is a sprinter–on flat races, the race reaches the finish together in one bunch, meaning the fastest man over the final few hundred metres wins. In such events, he is masterful; only a crash, or his being blocked prevents him winning. He is hands down the fastest racer in the world, and most probably the fastest there has ever been.

He has achieved something almost no sportspeople do—he has changed the sport he competes in. His dominance has forced three major changes. Firstly, riders have stopped trying to compete with him. A number of today’s more all-round riders are former sprinters who have re-trained so their talents no longer clash with Cavendish’s.

Secondly, he has forced the Tour de France to change its routes. To stop him winning all its non-Alpine or Pyrenean stages they’ve had to replace them with ones featuring steep finishes which disadvantage big sprinters.

Thirdly, he has forced the Tour to change its rules. Such was his sprinting dominance that when he wasn’t winning the race’s green sprints jersey because of quirks in the points allocation system, they changed it so he would. All this and he’s only 26.

A complete list of his accolades would be too long to reel off here, but his 20 Tour de France stage wins—the fifth most in the race’s history—deserve a mention. If he continues at the same rate he will have more than any other cyclist by the age of 30, and could still have five more years racing to go. In a sport that demands remarkable athletes, Cavendish is already firmly instated in its proverbial hall of fame.

Perhaps because cycling is not a mainstream sport in Britain, the public has been slow to cotton on to Cavendish’s prowess, but he is already a superstar on the continent. With a Tour de France jersey and a World Championship title already under his belt, and the Olympics next year, he’s sure to join the ranks of our greatest sporting icons.