Agree,ok i'm sure there are cavendish fans here,but he's really showed himself to be a classless little prick. I think he must have grown up listening to oasis,and thought it was cool to be as arrogant as them.

Fire away.

well he is a great sprinter but one hell of an arrogant guy...

He would suck at basketball.

Nah, he's just "spunky".

Pro cycling would be boring with out its characters

I think there is a difference between characters and people who are simply jerks. Cipo was a character with his colorful kits, rolling up his sleeves to work on his tan during boring stages, etc. Cav is being a jerk by making rude comments and gestures aimed at anyone who isn't slobbering all over him.

Well the douchbag dropped out of the tour! You know a couple knuckle sandwiches into that new set of teeth would probably change his attitude.

He also acted like a totally juvenile when he crashed during the London prologue at '07 TdF.

I dont think he dropped out. I think he was asked not to participate er removed.

Two fingers mean what? Peace.

I believe it's Piss Off.

That's the polite version. A "V" of two finger with the palm out is "peace".

his grandmother died and he went to attend her funeral.

ed rader

were you around back then? because i remember it differently. cipo had his detractors too.

ed rader

well the hand on the right upper harm means : shove it up your... and the 2 means he had two wins or something I can't remember exactly.

Didn't his gramother die last year?

I really hope he gets his act together because it's awesome to watch him sprint those last 300 meters. His db'edness really detracts from his talent. GL

Yes, Cavendish probably isn't the sort of guy you hope your daughter brings home. It isn't unusual, though, for top sprinters to be markedly unlike Mother Theresa. Those who appear less confrontational than Cav are often just as likely to give their opponent's elbow a tweak at a critical moment...

EDIT are there really people here who don't understand what a two-fingered salute means? Surely this can't just be a Brit thing?

In the US, two fingers up means "two". Palm forward, it usually means "peace". Despite that, I am aware of its meaning in other parts of the world. And yes, he's a ******bag for doing it.

The two-fingered salute is (or was) uniquely English and very old. When during the Hundred Years War Henry V was ravaging the French countryside and generally making himself unpopular, the French king finally had enough and sent a massive army to squash the little upstart once and for all. The result was the Battle of Agincourt (1415), where the French side was considered (by everyone, including the English) to be about to win because it was larger and had lots of cavalry and lots of armored fighters, especially knights (nobles, and like tanks on the battlefield).

The English had a unique weapon - the longbow - that the French nobility just hated. They thought it unchivalrous and bad manners that a smelly, illiterate commoner could punch holes in a fully armored nobleman without giving him a fair chance to hack his head off first. Worse, they couldn't match it because it takes years of practice to make a longbowman. 80% of Henry's army were longbowmen.

During or after a losing battle archers would generally surrender. The winner would accept surrender since a) without their bows they weren't considered a threat, and b) chivalry required it since this was essentially a battle between kings. So an archer could reasonably expect to lose and yet live. But since they considered the longbow an affront against chivalry, the French declared that any captured archer would have his first two fingers (those that draw the bow) cut off.

The next day, the English kicked French ass and the English bowmen gave the "two fingered salute" to show that they still had their fingers. So the salute originally signified victory and defiance - in a rather rude manner.

In WWII, Winston Churchill popularized the "V for victory" hand sign. But that sign was a pun -- every Englishman knew what it really was. Some currently translate the salute as equivalent to the one-fingered version, but it's really not. Usually.

In the pic above, Cav is accentuating the "defiance" side of the meaning.

Most sprinters are quite normal. Like this guy.

DMF, thanks for that info.

DMF, it's a great story, and widely believed. It may even be true, but sadly we don't have the evidence. I'm prepared to go with it, though, just because it ought to be true.

There is a little contemporary evidence. One guy who was at the battle wrote that Henry alluded to the French threat in his famous pre-battle speech. That doesn't mean they actually made it, or that the archers saluted. But the story isn't totally apocryphal.

Personally, I think history would be poorer were it not true.

Personally, I think cycling would be poorer were it not so.

I agree.

The sprinters are the divas of cycling, if you will. Sports are entertainment. Could you imagine cycling if everyone had the personality of Levi Leipheimer? Booring! There something to be said about having a great villain in a story. The guy you love to hate. The one you want to get beat. Its what creates great rivalries. Cavi is a great sprinter. And he's not afraid to tell anyone about it. Like it or not, that's good for cycling.