Mark Cavendish links up with Mark Renshaw as Australian joins Astana Qazaqstan as a sports director

Mark Cavendish and Mark Renshaw have been reunited at Astana Qazaqstan Team with the Australian joining as a sports director in 2024.

Renshaw worked with the team as a consultant during this year's Tour de France but joins on a permanent basis for next season.

“I am very excited to be taking on a director sportif role with Astana Qazaqstan for the upcoming 2024 season. After working on the Tour de France alongside the staff and riders at Team Astana Qazaqstan I knew that I have more to give professional cycling. With the support of my amazing family, to get back into elite sport I believe I can help lead our talented riders to victories in some of the biggest and best races on the calendar," Renshaw said in a statement released by the team.

"I need to thank Alexandr Vinokurov for giving me this opportunity to pass on my experience to the team. We have some huge objectives ahead of us in 2024 and I can't wait to work on achieving these goals with the team."

Renshaw and Cavendish rode together during several phases of their racing careers. They first linked up at Columbia-HTC in 2009 before reuniting several years later at Omega Pharma Quick-Step. They then both moved to Team Dimension Data in 2016 and raced on the team until Renshaw’s retirement at the end of 2019. As a lead-out rider, Renshaw helped to propel Cavendish to the majority of his Tour de France success.

Cavendish has remained in the peloton since then and signed a one-year contract extension with Astana for 2024 after initially announcing his retirement during the Giro d’Italia in May.

Renshaw joined the team this summer with the aim of helping Cavendish win a record-setting 35th Tour de France stage but the sprinter crashed out in the first half of the race.

The team has bolstered Cavendish’s lead-out during the off-season with Michael Mørkøv and Rüdiger Selig joining. Max Kanter has also signed from Movistar to provide another sprint option.

“We had a very good experience with Mark Renshaw during the Tour de France,” Astana team boss Alexandr Vinokurov said in the press release.

“His help and advice were very useful not only in the matter of sprint issues but also in general in the matter of race strategy. We had a nice conversation afterwards; we have a common vision on many things about team development through the prism of conducting the races and preparation to it. So, I believe that having a young sports director with a different modern vision to cycling would help us to keep on improving.”