'The goal is winning' - Cavendish to make team debut at Tour of Oman

Mark Cavendish will make his heavily anticipated season debut for Astana Qazaqstan at the Tour of Oman following a turbulent lead-up to the race.

MUSCAT, OMAN - FEBRUARY 09: Mark Cavendish of The United Kingdom and Astana Qazaqstan Team during the 12th Tour of Oman 2023, Media Day / #TourofOman / on February 09, 2023 in Muscat, Oman. (Photo by Alex Broadway/Getty Images) Credit: Alex Broadway/Getty Images

Watch extended highlights from the Tour of Oman on SBS On Demand.

The 37-year-old will ride his first race of the 2023 season tonight (AEDT), the Muscat Classic, to be followed by the start of the Tour of Oman on Saturday.

While a race victory in the hilly one-day Muscat Classic will likely be out of reach for the Briton, the five-day Oman tour will act as the perfect precursor to the July start of the 2023 Tour de France, as his bid for a maiden stage victory with new team Astana Qazaqstan begins to take definitive shape.

However, the road to beginning the current season for the two-time Le Tour green jersey winner has proved far from uneventful.

From the collapse of the B&B Hotels project, a team that Cavendish was expected to lead, and the subsequent rumours surrounding where the Briton would end up this season, it has been a turbulent few months for Cavendish.

Meanwhile, the 35-time Tour de France stage winner stated in a recent interview that "the goal is winning - not one particular win, it's winning," and he will likely target the opening stage of the Tour of Oman with this mentality.

The one flat stage in Oman's route this year is on a course familiar to the Briton, with the route from Al Rustaq fort to the Oman Convention centre noted as virtually identical to the 2022 opener - where Cavendish was narrowly beaten by Colombian Fernando Gaviria (Movistar).

The Astana Qazaqstan rider will enter this year's opening stage of the five-day event the hot favourite, although he will likely face stiff competition from UAE Team Emirates' Pascal Ackermann, always a strong contender on uphill sprints, and the new fast man in Cavendish's old team, Tim Merlier (Soudal-QuickStep), Max Kanter (Movistar), David Dekker (Arkéa-Samsic), and Greg Van Avermaet (AG2R Citroën).

As the focus switches to the GC standings by day two of the race, among those in contention are Cavendish's new teammate Alexey Lutsenko, Jan Hirt and Fausto Masnada (both Soudal-QuickStep), and Louis Meintjes of Intermarché-Circus-Wanty.

The strong lineup of Astana Qazaqstan, however, will likely be the main focus of the five-day race, particularly with the talents of U23 World Champion Yevgeniy Fedorov and the long-awaited team debut of Cavendish on display.