Mark Cavendish

The world’s best road race sprinter, Mark Cavendish is favourite to win gold in the London Olympic Games road race. The first British road race world champion for almost 50 years when he won in Copenhagen in 2011, Cavendish went into 2012 with 20 Tour de France wins to his name - the sixth highest of all time - and became the first Briton to ever win the green jersey when he claimed the prize in 2011. After starting his cycling career on the track, Cavendish moved to the road in 2005 and featured in his first Tour de France in 2007. Four stage wins in just his second tour in 2008 was the first time a British cyclist had ever achieved that feat. Cavendish withdrew from the Tour early to focus on his challenge for Madison gold at the Beijing Olympics alongside Bradley Wiggins, but the pair finished eighth - meaning that ‘Cav’ was the only member of the British track cycling team to leave the last Games without a medal. Victory in the 2009 Milan-San Remo race and six stage wins in the Tour de France of that year cemented his place as one of the top sprint cyclists in the sport, and a further five stage wins in 2010 saw him finish second in the green jersey standings. 2011 saw Cavendish dominate road sprinting, winning the world road race, five stages and the green jersey in the Tour de France and the Olympic test event in London, earning him an MBE in the Queen’s summer honours list and the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award. Cavendish is likely to start the road race as favourite for gold, but the opposition teams will look to drop him on the ascents - as they managed successfully in the 2012 Milan-San Remo race - and the Australian, French and German teams will all have hopes of beating the home nation’s sprint specialist.