I'm not in the know to much about Cycling, but how can Mark Cavendish never win the Tour if he's the best?
Cav is the fastest over the last 200 metres of a stage, but he's not the best overall. I'll try and explain.
Cav wins stages, but it is entirely possible to win a tour without winning a stage as long as you consistantly finish near the front.
The Grand Tours (TdF, Vuelta d'Espania & The Giro d'Italia) are stage races of 20 stages and the guy with the lowest overall time is the winner, and a Grand Tour will never be won by a sprinter. *
Example:
Stage 1 is a flat stage. Cav wins the sprint at the end ahead of all the other sprinters. Everyone finishes together and the stage takes 2 hours. As the bunch finishes together, everyone gets the same time of 2 hours. (The tour always starts with a mini TT called the Prologue in order to get time gaps between all the riders, but we'll ignore that in this example.) So, Cav leads overall as he crossed the line first, but everyone has the same time of exactly 2 hours.
Stage 2 has a huuuuge great big mountain at the end. The bunch all stay together, but because some are better at climbing than others, it splits up with the climbers at the front, and the sprinters at the back. The first guy, a climber, crosses the line in a time of 2 hours. The field trail in, all getting different times, until the sprinters group at the back cross the line in 2 and a half hours. The guy who wins this mountain stage, has a cumulative time of 4 hours. Cav, who finished half an hour behind him, has a time of 4 and a half hours. That's half an hour behind, and he cannot get that back.
He can't get that back as the stage that the sprinters win generally finish with the field altogether.
The only types of cyclist that can win a Grand Tour and TTers who can climb, or a climber who can TT. Obviously, if it's a mountainous route, the climbers have a better chance. The TdF, favours a TTer as it had 2 long TTs and not that many mountains.
The only races Sprinters can win are one-off races as long as the bunch stays together.
Also, cycling is very much a team sport. If we take team Sky as an example. There are 9 guys in the team, and 8 of them are there to give all their energy in getting the team leader, Brad, to the end of the stage. They'll ride in front of him, giving him slipstream, so he is expending less energy than someone riding in front. The team will have a plan and riders will ride specific parts of the stage. If you've watched any stages, you'll notice that Brad always has the same guys left at the end (Froome, Porte and Boassen-Hagen.) The other guys, will have done their work earlier in the stage. A guy riding on his own will have a much harder time.
* There are 3 main types of rider in the Grand Tours. Sprinters, Climbers, Time Trialists.
Sprinters are the fastest guys on 2 (human powered, normal bicycle) wheels but, because of the way muscles work, they can't climb or TT.
Climbers can go up mountans like goats, but can't sprint or TT.
TT'ers can go fast for a long time on their own, but can't normally climb.
