Mark Cavendish dejected from Team Sky
Team Sky’s performance throughout the 2012 season was nothing short of spectacular as it snatched the top overall spot at the UCI World Tour team’s 2012 rankings with a convincing margin of over 500 points.
The team managed to occupy the first two overall positions at the Tour de France 2012 with Bradley Wiggins and Christopher Froome helping the team with an easy victory at the three-week race.
Wiggins became the first British cyclist in the history of the sport to bag an overall victory at the French Grand Tour with his compatriot and teammate Christopher Froome finishing 3 minutes and 21 seconds behind at the second position.
Both, Wiggins and Froome were given maximum support by the team and the former Tour de France Green Jersey winner, Mark Cavendish never had enough men on his side to defend his title.
"The Sky company slogan says, ‘Believe in better’ but in the end we didn’t really buy into that,” Cavendish told The Telegraph.
“We could have been better this year. It wasn’t a failure, and I was very proud to be part of a British yellow-jersey winning team with Brad, but it wasn’t the ultimate either”.
“We didn’t achieve what I thought we were setting out to achieve at the start of the season”.
“My calculation was that it was worth losing those three to win the yellow with Brad and take green,” he said.
“I wanted to be part of a team that made history.”
The Manxman noted that he could have claimed at least eight stages at the Tour, had he given enough support from the British team.
Nevertheless, Cavendish managed to bag three stages at the race after his heroic performances during the 2nd, 18th and 20th stages of the Tour de France 2012.
He had to settle for the fourth overall position at the 2012 Tour de France point’s classifications with a total number of 220 points to his account.
Peter Sagan of Team Liquigas-Cannondale occupied the top position with 421 UCI points, Andre Greipel of Team Lotto Belisol and Matthew Harley Goss of Team Orica-GreenEdge securing the seconds and the third positions with 280 and 268 points respectively.
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