The 30-year-old, the most prolific sprinter on the road with 26 Tour de France stage wins, has been sweating on the chance to finally win a first Olympic medal ever since this year's world championships in London.
Cavendish finished sixth in the multi-discipline omnium event at the Olympic velodrome, missing the top-three target Britain's technical director Shane Sutton had set him to secure his place on the plane to Brazil.
Dibben won gold in the points race, one of the elements of the two-day omnium, in London while Cavendish showed his track credentials when he partnered Bradley Wiggins to gold in the non-Olympic Madison event.
A crash in the Netherlands last weekend in the ZLM Roompot tour, however, left Dibben with a broken elbow.
"He is being operated on today," Sutton told Reuters. "It's a pretty quick turnaround so I wouldn't say he's out but it's a setback for Jon."
British Cycling later issued an update on Dibben, saying they were confident he would return to training "imminently" after his surgery.
"His Rio ambitions remain unaffected," the statement added.
Whoever is selected for the omnium would also be the 'fifth man' in the four-man team pursuit and Dibben was part of the British squad that took silver in London last month.
Cavendish has limited experience in the 4km team pursuit, one of the blue-riband events of the Rio track programme, but Sutton was upbeat about his selection chances on Tuesday.
"Mark is continuing his training in the hope that he will make the squad and we will look at his training times and see where he's at," Sutton said. "The team will be announced on June 13 and Mark is definitely in the frame.
"We have his results from the worlds and (the UCI Track World Cup) Hong Kong and we are quite happy with those performances but obviously there are two or three other guys in the frame.
"We will look at training data from now up until selection and make a recommendation."
(Editing by Alan Baldwin)
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