Mark Cavendish

Team RadioShack have confirmed that Lance Armstrong, missing from the past week’s two major European races, Paris-Nice and the Tirreno-Adriatico due to his participation in last weekend’s Cape Argus ride in South Africa, will race in Saturday’s Milan-San Remo.

Mark Cavendish has been talking about the pain of the tooth infection which delayed his start to the season and seemed to have forced him out of the final stage of the Tour of Andalucia.

After a gruelling mountain stage a couple of days ago, Cavendish abandoned the race in its dying hours, making this the first multi-day event since April 2008 in which the Manxman has not scored at least one victory.

A wet and chilly start to Mark Cavendish's 2010 season began in Spain yesterday, as he turned team helper in stage one of the Tour of Andalusia.

The Isle of Man rider's sprinting skills were all but redundant on the four-hour battle over the mountains, so he spent much of the day between the team car and the pack, bringing up rain jackets and water for his team-mates.

Cavendish, whose start to the season was delayed due to dental treatment, crossed the mountain-top finish line of La Guardia de Jaen in 86th place, eight minutes down on winner Sergio Pardilla.

It’s hard to believe given the way he has stamped his authority on the sport in the last couple of years, but with British cycling fans’ focus in the early weeks of the 2010 road racing season being very much on the performance of new pro outfit Team Sky, Mark Cavendish has almost become the forgotten man of the peloton.

Mark Cavendish is in the running for a major international sporting award.

The Manx rider has been nominated in the breakthrough of the year category at the 2010 Laureus World Sport Awards.

The nomination recognises his achievements in the 2009 Tour de France, where he won six stages and became the first British rider to win on the Champs-Elysees.

He faces stiff competition for the award from fellow Britons Formula 1 driver Jenson Button and diver Tom Daley. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi on 10 March.

Cycling fans attending last week’s Rollapaluza Winter League event at the Half Moon pub in Herne Hill, London, were astonished to be rubbing shoulders with none other than HTC-Columbia’s star sprinter, Mark Cavendish, who was in the capital for a photoshoot.

Mark Cavendish has delayed the start of his 2010 season due to an ongoing dental problem.

According to the BBC, his HTC Columbia team say they want to give him time to get in some extra base training before sending him out on the spring races. He will begin in Ruta del Sol on February 21

A few days ago, the Manxman was ordered to stay off his bike for a few days following emergency dental treatment. Doctors in Majorca told him to rest after he had to have a painful tooth abscess drained.

road.cc's  Rider of the Year,  Mark Cavendish has condemned the return to cycling of drug cheat Riccardo Ricco, calling him 'a parasite'.

Cavendish was speaking after the news that Ricco plans to join a small Italian team, Ceramica Flaminia, when his ban ends on March 10. Originally handed down a two-year suspension after his ejection from the Tour de France in 2008, Ricco's ban - after testing positive for CERA, the third-generation form of the human growth hormone EPO - was reduced by four months on appeal on the grounds of his cooperation.

ProTour team operator High Road Sports has announced that it is reversing its sponsors’ names this year, meaning that this year it will race under the HTC-Columbia name.

No reasons were given for the switch, although presumably it is designed to give slightly more emphasis to smartphone brand HTC, which came on board as team sponsor shortly before last year’s Tour de France, memorably celebrated by Mark Cavendish as he made a phone-to-ear gesture as he crossed the line to take Stage 3 of the race.

Road.cc readers have voted Mark Cavendish their rider of 2009 as the Manx Missile played the unaccustomed role of staging an early breakaway and holding on despite late entrant Fabian Cancellara’s efforts to reel him in.

Cavendish took just under a third of the 400 or so votes cast, while Cancellara gained the thumbs-up from 28% of readers.