'Ingratitude' - Lefevere hits back at Cavendish's account of contract talks

Patrick Lefevere has queried Mark Cavendish’s account of their contract negotiations in the most recent instalment of his autobiography, decrying his former rider’s attitude as one of “ingratitude.”

Cavendish returned to Deceuninck-QuickStep on a minimum wage contract in 2021 but began negotiating a new deal ahead of that year’s Tour de France, where he would go on to win four stages and the green jersey.

In Believe: Achieving the Impossible, written in collaboration with Daniel Friebe, Cavendish outlines his discussions with Lefevere in the summer and autumn of 2021, claiming that the team manager repeatedly stalled the negotiations.

Cavendish eventually signed a one-year deal worth €500,000, but he claimed he should have held out for more given his success in 2021. “He’d spent months making me sweat again – just fucking with me, was how it felt,” Cavendish writes. 

“The whole saga had been frankly insulting. 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.”

Speaking to Het Nieuwsblad, who published an excerpt from the book on Friday, Lefevere did not dispute the figures cited by Cavendish, but he insisted that there were inaccuracies in his account.

“I find what Mark writes in his autobiography particularly regrettable,” Lefevere said. “I rescued him from a difficult situation and gave him a contract when no one else wanted him. Now we are facing this.”

In particular, Lefevere took issue with Cavendish’s belief that the negotiation saga had been “insulting.”

“Mark got everything we agreed at the time, just like all the riders who rode for our team,” Lefevere said. “There are inaccuracies in his story that I don’t want to go into, but ingratitude is clearly the world’s reward.”

Cavendish had enjoyed a successful three-year stint with QuickStep from 2013 to 2015, and he returned to the team in 2021 after finding himself without a contract and on the cusp of retirement.

An injury to Sam Bennett opened a spot in QuickStep’s Tour team and Cavendish proceeded to win four stages. Although he remained with QuickStep in 2022, winning a stage of the Giro d’Italia and the British road title, he was omitted from the Tour team in favour of Fabio Jakobsen. 

Cavendish left for Astana-Qazaqstan in 2023, where he won a record-breaking 35th stage at the Tour before retiring in 2024. Lefevere remained in situ as CEO of Soudal-QuickStep until he retired at the end of 2024.