An unsung hero

One of the great inequalities in sport dictates that some individuals do not receive the praise for their efforts that they deserve, simply because their sport doesn't command the attention of the masses and the lucrative sponsorship opportunities of others.

As the country gets swept up in Euro 2008 and berates itself over the absence of any home nation, and then braces itself for the inevitable failure of Britons at Wimbledon this Summer, one Englishman is making waves on the world arena, and the vast majority of the public wouldn't even know it.

When I say Mark Cavendish is one of the leading sprint cyclists in the world, it is not a stretch of the imagination. Some might say that on current form, Cavendish could easily be considered the best. After winning two stages in the Giro D'Italia a few weeks ago, Cavendish has continued his preparations for Le Tour, which begins on July 5th, with another stage win in the prestigious Dauphine Libre this week. He has a genuine chance of succeeding in his aim to win a stage, or even two, at the world's most famous cycling race, which is a phenomenal feat - one that most people outside of the cycling world wouldn't know about.

It's a gross disparity when footballers like Frank Lampard and Christiano Ronaldo, now out of action for two months until the football season starts again, continue to dominate the sports pages of all the newspapers, when other sportsmen and women, British ones at that, are performing at phenomenal levels at the same time, unbeknown to us.

It was the same with Victoria Pendleton in 2006, who after dominating the women's cycling World Cup, and although nominated for the Sports Personality that year, didn't get anywhere near the praise that her efforts truly deserved. Hopefully her greater exposure at the Olympics this summer will bring her to the attention of the wider British public.

Le Tour is the greatest test of physical and mental endurance that sport has to offer, and to have a British cyclist at the forefront of it with the potential to win stages, we should be shouting about it from the rooftops. Instead, we're debating whether some footballer will move for £60m and 150 grand a week. What's it all come to?