Cavendish to skip Paris-Tours

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Mark Cavendish has won four stages so far at the Tour of Spain, including the inaugural team time trial. There may well be two more to come, with Friday’s and Sunday’s stages both potential sprint finishes. But he already has his sights set on the last two events that he’ll take part in this year: the world championships in Geelong on October 3rd, where he will ride for Great Britain, and the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi on October 10, where he will ride for the Isle of Man.

“Of all my four wins here, the most important is the team time trial on day 1,” said the sprinter from HTC-Columbia who wore the red jersey of the Vuelta in Sevilla. He was full of praise for the hard work done by his team in spite of being deprived of their two powerhouses Bernhard Eisel and Hayden Roulston, who were forced to pull out prematurely.

Cavendish is obviously in a physical condition that allows him to go to the world championships with high ambitions even though he’ll have only two team-mates in the British team: David Millar and Jeremy Hunt.

“I’m looking forward to representing my country and doing well at the world championship in Australia,” Cavendish said. “At the Vuelta, I’ve seen a lot of guys in good form, so the competition will be hard. After that, I’ll only do the road race at the Commonwealth Games. I won’t do anything on the track like four years ago when I won gold in Melbourne. I’d have liked to do Paris-Tours but it’s impossible to be competitive just one week after the World’s with the travelling and the time difference, so I’ve opted for the Commonwealth Games. We have a great group of cyclists on the Isle of Man. I’m proud to put on that jersey. I’m looking forward to that.”

The course of the road race at Vijay Chowk on October 10 in India is set to be completely flat, which means that Cavendish has a good chance to strike again before the end of the 2010 season.