The Art of the Sprint - Mark Cavendish’s Nike X Damien Hirst shoes are the most unusual, and expensive, cycling collaboration of 2024

We are guilty here at Cyclingnews of focussing on the pure performance tech, especially at the Tour de France. Mark Cavendish’s marginal gains in service of his record-breaking 35th stage win have already been the subject of a whole tech article in themselves, but his shoes slipped totally under our radar. 

Cav often has custom Nike cycling shoes - shoes it must be said that nobody else has because Nike doesn’t sell them - but his most recent and likely final pair of custom shoes have been designed by none other than Damien Hirst. 

For those not familiar with the name, you probably know Damien Hirst as the man who set animals, bisected down the middle, in formaldehyde. Art? Well, they went in a gallery so I guess they must be. Regardless, Hirst is reportedly the UK’s richest living artist, with a wealth of $384m according to the 2020 Sunday Times rich list (when he was last featured). 

Given that he probably doesn’t need the money it’s safe to assume designing cycling shoes for Britain's greatest cyclist is probably just a passion project.

Cycling is no stranger to unorthodox collaborations. Perhaps the most well-known, and most regular, is fashion mogul Paul Smith working with premium cycling brands. He has created limited edition jerseys with Rapha, and most recently a custom paint scheme for Factor bikes.

Last year Cavendish had another ‘final’ pair of cycling shoes, this time in collaboration with fashion accessories designer, Sophia Webster. They featured the usual white base, but with gold soles and a wing motif near the rear, evoking the image of Hermes, the Greek God of trade, wealth, luck, fertility, animal husbandry, sleep, language, thieves, and travel… busy man!

Speaking to journalists early in the Tour de France, Cavendish revealed that he owns “a few of his [Damien Hirst’s] pieces”, and that it “was an honour when he agreed to do my last shoes.”

The Manxman didn’t reveal if there was any significance to the butterflies that cover the shoes. However, butterflies are a motif across much of Hirst's work – several of his pieces feature live and dead butterflies. Their use is often described as reflecting Hirst's interest in life, dreams and the artist's obsession with death. 

While we can't project meaning onto Cav's shoe design, we can't help feeling that perhaps either Cav or Hirst (or both) were keen that the artwork reflects this closing of his career, and perhaps the metamorphosis into the next chapter of the sprinting legend's life.

The turquoise base colour, meanwhile, is just there to match the Astana team jerseys.

It also should be noted that Cavendish admitted that he was "a bit nervous to get them scuffed", which could be why we saw him wearing his usual white and black pair for stages where a sprint finish, and the risk of crashing, were more likely.