Tour de France 2019: Mark Cavendish absence ‘a big call’ says Dimension Data teammate Steve Cummings

Cummings is sad to see a ‘friend’ and ‘legend’ Cavendish miss out on the tour

Steve Cummings admitted he was "sad" to start the Tour de France without Dimension Data team-mate Mark Cavendish.

Cavendish will not start the race in which he has made his name for the first time since his debut in 2007.

The 30-time Tour stage winner was left out of Dimension Data's eight-man squad by boss Doug Ryder, apparently against the wishes of the team's head of performance Rolf Aldag.

"It's just sad," Cummings said. "I've known him a long time as a friend and he's a legend of the Tour de France.

"It's a big call to leave him out."

While Cavendish is understood to be devastated by the decision, having spent his entire season to date preparing for the Tour, Cummings admitted his own selection had come as a surprise.

Though the 38-year-old began the season targeting the Tour, a string of setbacks left him fearing the worst.

Since finishing racing Tirreno-Adriatico and Milan-Sanremo in April, Cummings suffered a broken collarbone in a crash at Itzulia-Basque while illness hampered him before and during the Criterium du Dauphine.

Steve Cummings is sad to see a ‘friend’ and ‘legend’ Mark Cavendish miss out on the tour (Getty)

"(After the crash) I came back in the Tour of Norway and felt really good, the numbers were really good," he said.

"Then I got sick, went to the Dauphine and got sick again, so I stopped. If you're bad in the Dauphine normally they pick the team after that, so I put two and two together and thought I was out of the team."

Cummings has two Tour stage wins to his name, delivering a memorable first for his South African-based team, then called MTN-Qhubeka, when he won on Mandela Day in 2015 before delivering again a year later.

Riding without a general classification hopeful, Dimension Data will stage-hunt in this year's Tour and Cummings has his eye on a few potential breakaway days already.

"There's quite a few (opportunities)," he said. "In the end it comes down to the legs for me."

PA