Mark Cavendish

Tour de France star Mark Cavendish will swap the pressure of the European tour for a different kind of peloton north of the border this coming Tuesday. The Team Columbia rider will start the inaugural Right To Play Pedal Power the Change Ride in Holyrood park, Edinburgh.

These are heady days for those of us who have been around the sport of cycling for a while now. Not since the late 80's and the Ever Ready, Banana/Falcon rivalry has the sport in Britain been on such as high. And there are a list of reasons why now could be the time to cash in and establish road cycling as on of the top sports in the nation.

Here are the opportunities as I see them.

And so the dust can now settle on the 2009 Tour de France and the winners of each individual classification are now know.

There isn't too much funny stuff you can say about Alberto Contador. It was clear he was suffering on the Ventoux but Andy Schleck was too preoccupied with trying to get his brother above Kloden, Wiggins and Armstrong to notice.

So for another year the carnival (or circus, or freak show, depending on your point of view) is over. After the crowds disperse on the Champs Elysées, all that's left on the roads of France are memories, fading chalk messages and discarded energy gel wrappers as the Tour packs up for another year. And it's certainly been an interesting Tour de France. A classic? no. But interesting. Today there was the usual champagne sipping and shenanigans on the slow-motion run in to Paris, and the usual balls-out sprint on the cobbles.

Cavendish sprints to glory on Stage 19 taking the win, but with Thor Hushovd right on his wheel. It should have been a stage for the break, it turned out to be one for the sprinters. Hushovd's second place means that the green jersey is still tantalisingly out of reach – in fact it was just behind him – but with this win a point had been made.