Mark Cavendish reported to have signed for Astana

It seems more a political issue. Do the powerbrokers think Cav is worthy of beating a long held record by the great cycling legend?
They bloody should do! He's a dogged and determined sprint legend!

Huge negative publicity if he doesn't though, a team's whole Tour effort, perhaps even their whole year, becomes associated with failing to achieve what they set out to do. I think the main problem though is the presence of the promotion and relegation system, every team needs every one of its 28 riders to be contributing throughout the year; there are only 120 points on offer for a Tour stage win, great as the publicity would be it wouldn't be much help if the team was demoted and didn't get any racing invites the next year. I'm a huge fan of the Missile but there's no getting around the fact that at his age he's going to need a very specialised and focused schedule, it's not as though he's a hungry young rider who could be picking you up 40 or 50 points every week.

Actually it is only the top 10 riders in a team that count in the team point standings, not the full 28 or 30.

The teams do need every rider to contribute, but that can be as a great lead out man or mountain domestique who doesn't score points.

In the current Astana line-up, who are going to be the riders that get big hauls of points?  Would Cav make the top 10?

Sniffer wrote:

Actually it is only the top 10 riders in a team that count in the team point standings, not the full 28 or 30.

Yes, but at least as I understand it the rankings are calculated on a weekly basis with the team's best ten riders that week making up the points tally, the next week's points could come from ten completely different riders, so it's still vital to have every rider contributing. It's not the ten highest scoring riders over the year that make up a team's total but the cumulative totals of the best ten riders each week. Willing to stand corrected but I believe that's how it works.

The rankings may be updated weekly, but I am fairly sure it is the 10 best scoring riders across the year.

https://lanternerouge.com.au/2022/02/15/the-fight-for-survival-world-tou...

There were definitely articles written on lanternerouge describing riders earning points that didn't count as they were not in the teams top 10.

When Dylan Teuns moved to Israel-Premier Tech mis season not only did his points not follow him, but he didn't improve his new teams score until he had added 120 points to move into Israel's top 10.

Yes looks like you're right - every day a learning day!

Should Cav break the record, a picture of him crossing the line would be used whenever the record is discussed. That is a sponsor's dream scenario. What the heck was Patrick Lefevre thinking? 

I agree, and surprised that Specialized and/or Oakley didn't step in and offer Quick Step a way to make it (financially) happen. That line crossing photo would have had the big S on his shoulder and a pair of Oakley glasses above that big grin.

Specialized did something similar in 2017 after Tinkoff folded, leaving Peter Sagan without a ride, they effectively funded Bora Hangrohe to take him and his whole entourage. The bike supply followed him to Direct Energies too. I guess it wasn't just money that Lefevere was thinking of, may have been difficult with Jakobsen in the squad. 

To be fair whilst Cav has had brilliant lead out trains at times (e.g. HTC) one of his big strengths compared to some of his contemporaries is the ability to read the race and freelance a lead out to end up in the right place at the right time.