Last chance saloon: Why has Mark Cavendish ended up at Astana? And will it work?

The British champion has joined the sixth different team of his professional career in the hunt for one more Tour de France stage win

Mark Cavendish
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Almost three weeks into the new year, three weeks when he was effectively without a ride for 2023, Mark Cavendish was announced as an Astana-Qazaqstan rider on Tuesday.

It was practically an open secret by this point, with there being intel on Cavendish at the Kazakh team's training camp before Christmas, and just last week a snap of the British champion at Alicante airport climbing into an Astana team car emerged.

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Adam Becket
News editor

Adam is Cycling Weekly’s news editor – his greatest love is road racing but as long as he is cycling, he's happy. Before joining CW he spent two years writing for Procycling. He's usually out and about on the roads of Bristol and its surrounds.

Before cycling took over his professional life, he covered ecclesiastical matters at the world’s largest Anglican newspaper and politics at Business Insider. Don't ask how that is related to cycling.