Mark Cavendish confirmed for Revolution at Derby Arena

Mon 10 Aug 2015

It has been confirmed that Mark Cavendish be racing at Derby Arena this weekend (14 - 16 August) for the Revolution Series, by featuring in the Omnium and Madison. This UCI class 1 event has been sponsored by Sir Dave Brailsford and been designed to enable Cavendish and other British stars to target important UCI qualification points prior to Rio.

The participation of Cavendish is a statement of intent as he targets track glory at Rio next Year:

“I’m looking forward to getting back on track and trying the Omnium,”

he confirmed.

“I’ve always maintained that my focus is my performances on the road as a professional rider for Etixx-Quick Step. However if there was any chance, however small, that I could be in a position to go for an Olympic medal in Rio then I have to keep all of my options open. No definitive decisions have been made yet. So I will try to do this through picking up qualification points in the Omnium fitted around my road racing schedule. The Omnium is a tough event with all the different disciplines so Derby will be a good test and we’ll see how things progress from there.”

With riders needing 90 UCI track ranking points by 15th September to qualify to race the World Cups British Cycling endurance Head Coach Heiko Salzwedel confirmed the importance of the Derby event:

"The Derby Revolution event is a very important milestone in our preparations for the Olympic Games in 2016.  We have two purposes for the event. One is of course collecting UCI points which will let our riders qualify for the World Championship in London next year, but the other is to establish a pecking order within Team GB – we’re looking to determine who is our number one rider, who is our number two rider for each event. The dates for the event are no coincidence, this is a chance to try out our preparations for the Games next year – it’s a trial run.”

Cavendish will be part of an all-star British line up, which will also feature Ed Clancy, Laura Trott, Jason Kenny, Jo Rowsell and Sir Bradley Wiggins.

The British team will face a strong international field with racing taking place across four sessions between 14-16 August, see the full programme for more details. You can still get tickets to see it all for yourself – get them before they are all gone.