Cavendish win victory for cycling.

Mark Cavendish winning the sports personality of the year award has killed two birds with one stone.

First of all for a change an actual “personality” has one the SPOFTY award instead of one of the wooden statues and secondly it has put the sport of cycling in it’s rightful place as one of sports big hitters in the nations psyche. And not before time.

Cycling is one of those sports where painful suffering is an art form. Much like triathlon and those funny things the Nordics do on skis, suffering is the name of the game and in Lance Armstrongs own words he was good at it. Suffering that is.

Cavendish’s win marks a turning point for cycling as a sport in this country.

Last year the overall cycling market grew a phenomenal 3.7 billion pounds according to city analysts and online sites like wiggle and chain reaction are seeing massive growth. The British public has finally seen the light in these austere times.

Cycling deserves to be a sport in the high pantheon of sporting greatness and from now on it will be recognised as such.

With the Olympics just around the corner and the camera friendliness of the Velodrome the sport is set for fantastic growth.

Couple that with the SKY race team and the form of Bradley Wiggins and we have a whole new betting opportunity.

Mark Cavendish is definitely a sporting personality and it’s going to be fun listening to his press conferences over the next couple of years. He certainly deserves the accolades he’s been receiving over the last year and if it wasn’t for a very poor refereeing decision in the 2010 Tour when he was wrongly accused of changing his line and cutting across Thor Hushvod in another frenetic dash for the line we would have been celebrating his success much sooner than yesterdays  glam TV event.

In the SKY cycling team we finally have some real interest in the Tour De France and with nearly full coverage of the event on Eurosport and ITV4 the 2012 tour is going to be a real spectacular. Just get Sean Kelly to speak up a bit and stop starting every sentence with “yes, …” and it will be a pleasure to watch.

Bradley Wiggins is still 14/1 on some markets to be the outright winner behind Contador and Schleck but considering that he was showing very well until his mishap in the 2011 tour I think that’s underpriced and he’s a good bet for the overall.

Cavendish has to be clear favourite to take the green jersey as one of his goals was to improve his overall game which should mean picking up extra points in the mid race sprints. No one holds a candle to him in a straight sprint for the line and he’s already proved he doesn’t need a team to drive him to the line by piggybacking when he needs to.

Put a free sports bet on Wiggins to take the tour and Cavendish to win the Green jersey and that combination will give you a great value bet.