Cavendish to ride Tirreno–Adriatico as Tour de France preparation ramps up

Mark Cavendish will ride the Tirreno–Adriatico as he continues his preparation for the Tour de France.

The seventh race of the UCI World Tour, the Tirreno–Adriatico will take place from March 4 to March 10, with the 1,115km distance spanning over seven stages.

Primoz Roglic, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider, is the defending champion, finishing 18 seconds ahead of Joao Almeida, the Team UAE rider, in second.

Briton Tao Geoghegan Hart, the now-Lidl-Trek rider, completed the podium in the colours of Ineos Grenadiers.

The race begins with a 10km individual time trial in Lido di Camaiore, and finishes with the longest stage of the race – 154km – in San Benedetto del Tronto.

Cavendish has had mixed fortunes at the Tirreno-Adriatico.

He won the final stage in 2009 in a sprint finish ahead of Tyler Farrar and Baden Cooke, but then suffered two crashes in 2015 and 2018, after he had won the second stage in 2012 and the sixth in 2014.

Cavendish, now riding for Astana Qazaqstan, will be joined by his long-time lead-out man Michael Morkov, who moved to Astana on Cavendish’s personal request ahead of the 2024 Tour de France, which begins in Florence on June 29.

The Manx Missile, who shares the record of 34 stage wins at the Tour with the legendary Eddy Merckx, will be gunning for 35th win this summer to write his name in the history books.

The 39-year-old will be joined on the start line for the Tirreno-Adriatico by Tom Pidcock, Jonas Vingegaard, Julian Alaphilippe, and Chris Froome.