Cavendish reveals how Brailsford rejected his slide deck pitch for Ineos place

Mark Cavendish has described how he put together a slide presentation for Dave Brailsford in an unsuccessful bid to land a place at Ineos Grenadiers after he was left without a team in the winter of 2022.

The revelation comes in Cavendish’s newly published autobiography, Believe: Achieving the Impossible, written in collaboration with Daniel Friebe.

Cavendish had been set to join B&B Hotels after leaving QuickStep at the end of the 2022 season, but he was left in the lurch when Jérôme Pinot’s team collapsed in November of that year.

After talks with teams including Human Powered Health, Israel-Premier Tech and EF Education-EasyPost fizzled out, Cavendish found himself pitching to Ineos towards the end of 2022.

Cavendish had previously been told by Ineos that there was no spot available for him, but Rod Ellingworth, then working as Deputy Team Principal, offered a glimmer of hope in late November. According to Cavendish, the offer came as Ineos realised its attempts to sign Remco Evenepoel from QuickStep might come to nothing.

“With the B&B ship now sunk, I got a call from Rod,” Cavendish writes. “They were working on something. Something that would blow the budget and a bit more. But it may not come off. And if it didn’t, there might be a place at Ineos. I didn’t need Rod to tell me that the ‘something big’ was signing Remco Evenepoel. 

“This sort of deal was rare in cycling because it was complex and expensive. Knowing my soon-to-be-old QuickStep boss Patrick Lefevere, who’d have to give his blessing, it looked like a long shot … but in cycling, like everywhere else, money talked.”

Cavendish had spent a season with Team Sky in 2012, but he had left the team due to its focus on the general classification at the Tour de France. A decade on, the Manxman felt the mood music had changed considerably.

“Rod had said that he would know ‘in a few days’, but I was getting anxious, so I suggested expediting things: how about I sent a presentation or deck to him and Dave Brailsford? Rod confirmed that it would be Dave who would have the ultimate say, so I should send it to him,” Cavendish writes.

“‘I can’t stop thinking about this now,’ I said to Rod in a message. ‘It just feels right for me and the team.’” 

Cavendish proceeded to put together a nine-slide presentation outlining why he believed he would fit in at the Ineos of 2023, which didn’t have a potential Tour winner in its ranks, and sent it to Brailsford.

“It took me almost a week to put together,” Cavendish wrote. “It took Brailsford the same time to respond, though via Rod. The answer, in summary: no thanks, Cav. Ineos Grenadiers weren’t signing Mark Cavendish … and they didn’t sign Remco Evenepoel.”

Cavendish would ultimately join Astana-Qazaqstan in 2023 and he would spend two seasons at Alexandre Vinokourov’s team, winning a record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage win in the process.

While Cavendish is full of praise for Vinokourov, describing the Kazakhstani as a “brilliant manager” and highlighting his upfront stance in contract negotiations, he is less complimentary about his financial dealings with Patrick Lefevere during his second stint at QuickStep.

Cavendish signed for QuickStep in 2021 on a contract of €70,000 plus bonuses, and he looked to negotiate a new deal with Lefevere for 2022 after winning four stages of the Tour de France. An early sticking point was confusion over whether Cavendish’s win bonuses for 2021 were being paid by Specialized or by the team. 

The Manxman was also dismayed that Specialized was attempting to sell limited edition bikes bearing his name after the Tour, having previously rejected the idea of paying his QuickStep salary for 2021. Cavendish instead brought a personal sponsor to cover his contract.

Cavendish claims that he and Lefevere had spoken about a €500,000 contract ahead of the 2021 Tour, but that the Belgian later claimed he didn’t recall the verbal agreement, telling the rider had only €250,000 left in his budget for 2022.

“A year earlier, Patrick, in whose team I’d raced in pomp, had even asked me to send him a CV before he considered signing me, for fuck’s sake. Now he’d spent months making me sweat again – just fucking with me, was how it felt,” writes Cavendish, who met with Lefevere at the end of the season.

“I reminded him of the agreement we’d had before the Tour, for €500,000, and he said he had no recollection. I told him that, anyway, that was the price we’d discussed, and since then I’d won four stages at the Tour and the green jersey… so really I should be getting double, particularly as there were riders in the team who had won two, three races in their entire career and were on seven figures. Patrick shook his head apologetically: he only had €250,000 left in his budget.”

After Cavendish signalled that he would not attend the team planning meeting in October 2021 without a signed contract, he and Lefevere eventually settled on a €500,000 deal for the 2022 season.

“The whole saga had been frankly insulting,” Cavendish writes. “Somehow Patrick always found a way to make sure he felt like the winner, and here he’d done it again. I’d blinked first and, ultimately, should have held out for €750,000.”