Brailsford Wants Cavendish To Go SKy-Bound.

Dave Brailsford last night revealed that he wants to sign sprint king Mark Cavendish up for his Team Sky outfit as soon as possible after seeing the Manxman win another five stages of the Tour de France to add to the ten won over the past two years.

The British Cycling Performance Director was as spellbound as the rest of world cycling as Cavendish, still only 25 years old, clinched five more stage wins, including the last, prestigious day on the Champs Elyssees in Paris, despite a wobbly start to the Tour and the disqualification of teammate and right-hand man Mark Renshaw for butting an opponent.

Brailsford has focussed Team Sky around British triple Olympic gold medallist Bradley Wiggins, who followed up his superb fourth place last year in his inaugural Tour de France with a rather disappointing 24th place this time round.

But the man who masterminded Team GB’s staggering eight gold medals inside the Laoshan Velodrome at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, now believes he can field both Wiggins and Cavendish at Team Sky and make a dual attempt at a podium place in General Classification for Wiggins, and the green jersey for most sprint points amassed for Cavendish.��

Although Cavendish still has one year remaining out of a three year contract with HTC-Columbia to complete, Brailsford has served notice that the man now recognised to be one of the biggest names in world cycling, is very welcome to join Team Sky.

“Who wouldn’t want Cav to be cycling for his team after what he did again at the Tour de France this year,” Brailsford admitted. “Of course we’d love to have him at Team Sky. He’d be a major addition and asset to our squad.

“Cav is undoubtedly one of the biggest names in the sport now after what he’s just done, if not the biggest. He has an X Factor few in sport have. He speaks his mind and he has huge lows and highs. You never know what he’s going to do next but he always ends up smiling and winning, even if he starts badly, or loses key people such as Renshaw. Nothing seems to stop him from emerging victorious. The guy is a born winner and cycling’s very happy to have him.”

Asked if he is making concrete moves to sign Cavendish up Brailsford replied: “Cav is under contract at HTC-Columbia so we’ll have to wait and see what happens, but after what I saw in the Tour just finished I reckon we could have two riders in Brad and Cav and give equal focus to a podium place and the green jersey.

“Perhaps an overall winner of the Tour de France needs a whole team around him but for our purposes we could devote our energies to someone like Cav in the sprints, where the GC guys are comfortable and look after themselves, and then switch priorities back to Brad when we hit the mountains, and where Cav just needs to complete the stages.”

Wiggins was also under contract with Garmin but this did not stop Team Sky snaring their man after paying compensation to Garmin, which means that Cavendish’s remaining one year deal at HTC-Columbia may not necessarily prove to be a stumbling block for Brailsford.

Whatever the case, it seems more likely this morning that Mark Cavensih may be joining the Team Sky revolution, if not next year then by 2012.�

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