New Sky Procycling signing Mark Cavendish has a clear goal, according to the team’s race coach Rod Ellingworth; a second victory in Milan Sanremo, but this time wearing the rainbow jersey as world champion.
“I think he would love to do that if he could,” Ellingworth told VeloNation, speaking about the rider’s early season targets. “For Cav, Sanremo and [Gent] Wevelgem are going to be two big goals for him.”
The rider took the championships in Denmark in September and since then has been dealing with life as one of the country’s top sportsmen. Last Monday he was one of ten athletes nominated for the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year [SPOTY] award, then two days later he was given a MBE by the Queen.
The two distinctions make it clear that his profile is on the rise, and reflect just a small number of the commitments he is dealing with in the off-season.
Despite that, Ellingworth believes that he is staying on top of things and is not being too sidetracked in terms of maintaining his condition. “He is going okay. I think there are a lot of distractions, but in general I think he is doing a little more work at the minute than he has in the last couple of years, so that is pretty good,” he explained.
“We will see how things go…but by the end of January he will be ahead of where he was at the same time last year.”
If so, that should set Cavendish up for a good push towards Sanremo, where he has the opportunity to be the first world champion to triumph in the race in over two decades. The Italian rider Guiseppe Saronni was the last to achieve the feat, way back in1983; the double is long overdue, but he’ll need to be in peak condition to pull it off.
Also see: Ellingworth on Wiggins' 2012 programme and confirmation rider will miss track events at London Olympics