Cavendish crashed twice on the second stage of the race. During the season he alternated between riding as a sprinter and as a lead-out man for team-mates, however Cavendish's racing programme was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. After he was not selected for the delayed 2020 Tour de France, Cavendish said that he felt that he was not ready for the Tour, due to a lack of racing and the race's particularly tough, mountainous route, and backed team-mate Mikel Landa's bid for the yellow jersey. He rode in the delayed cobbled classics in the autumn, making a number of early breakaways. At Gent–Wevelgem he stated in an interview with Sporza that the race might be his last: He subsequently clarified that the comment related to rumours about subsequent Flemish classic races being cancelled, which turned out not to be the case: after riding in Scheldeprijs, the Tour of Flanders and the Three Days of Brugge-De Panne he declared in an interview with Het Nieuwsblad that he had had "(his) best racing month for a long time" and indicated that he wanted to continue racing "for a few more seasons". Deceuninck–Quick-Step (2021–22) Following reports that he was due to retire due to difficulty in securing a World Tour contract, in December 2020, Cavendish announced his return to for the 2021 season. His contract was for the UCI WorldTeam minimum salary of €40,000, and he had to bring his own sponsor to the team. 2021 In April he took his first four professional victories since 2018, winning stages 2, 3, 4 and 8 of the Tour of Turkey. In June he took another win in the fifth and final stage of the Tour of Belgium, triumphing over a field which included such names as Caleb Ewan, Tim Merlier, Pascal Ackermann, Dylan Groenewegen and Nacer Bouhanni. Cavendish's teammate, Sam Bennett had an increasingly strained relationship with the team's management, and when Bennett was ruled out of the Tour de France following a training injury, Cavendish was drafted in as the team's lead sprinter. He won stages four, six, ten and thirteen of the Tour, bringing his total of Tour de France stage victories to 34, making him the joint record holder for Tour stage wins along with Eddy Merckx. On the race's final stage to the Champs-Élysées, Cavendish missed out on the win, finishing third behind Wout van Aert and Jasper Philipsen, however