Blazin' Saddles: Mark Cavendish on song as Tinkoff bow out

With the curtains but a Japanese criterium away from closing on the 2016 season, riders of the pro peloton raced far and wide this weekend ahead of their annual two-week hibernation.

Putting his World Championships disappointment behind him, Britain's Mark Cavendish snared a brace of wins in the Abu Dhabi Tour to bookend his road season in trademark triumphant style.

By outsprinting Italians Giacomo Nizzolo and Elia Viviani on the Yas Marina F1 circuit, Cavendish notched his 10th win of a stellar season which saw him flirt prodigiously with both an Olympic gold medal and the rainbow jersey.

All things considered, it's been a solid season for the 31-year-old who many had written off following a relatively barren final year at Etixx-QuickStep.

While marrying his track and road commitments in 2016 – "I always use the analogy about Andy Murray switching from tennis to squash" – Cavendish still secured an Olympic silver medal, four stage wins in the Tour de France (plus an elusive yellow jersey) and victories in Qatar, Croatia, California and Abu Dhabi.

That Cavendish's win in Qatar happened in February and not in October will be, perhaps, the Manxman's biggest regret. Follow Adam Blythe's wheel in the finale, and the rainbow jersey was his; instead, Cavendish shadowed Peter Sagan, then had a change of heart and was crowded out.

A rainbow jersey would certainly have helped his Dimension Data team secure World Tour status for 2017 – something which seems bizarrely uncertain despite the team's Tour de France haul through Cavendish and fellow Briton Steve Cummings.

You see, the truth is that Dimension Data just haven't won enough big races: for instance, Cavendish's other victories did not come in World Tour races. The upshot is that Dimension Data finished the season languishing in 18th place with just 290 points – some 128 points behind IAM Cycling, the soon-to-be-defunct Swiss team which nevertheless notched stage wins in all three Grand Tours.

While IAM Cycling will be joined by Tinkoff on the scrap heap, the creation of the Bahrain-Merida team, the new incarnation of Lampre with another co-title sponsor, plus Bora-Hansgrohe's expected promotion from the Pro-Continental ranks, means one team is going to miss out.

That it could be Dimension Data – who lit up the Tour de France – and not, say, Cannondale-Drapac – who did not so much light up France in July as pour damp water over everything in their direct proximity – is quite baffling.

And consider this: Cannondale-Drapac actually finished the season in eighth place in the UCI rankings on 616 points – despite not having taken a World Tour scalp since Davide Formolo won a stage in the Giro d'Italia back in May 2015.

Cannondale were set to finish the season with less wins as a team than Cavendish as an individual – until Italy's Davide Villella managed to make it 10 by soloing to victory in the Japan Cup for the first time in his pro career on Sunday. Hardly the kind of scalp that Cavendish or Cummings delivered for Dimension Data last summer (the latter also winning the Tour of Britain).

With that in mind, it's hard to envisage a scenario where Cavendish is not present at the start of the Tour de France next year in Dusseldorf – even if his Dimension Data have to secure their place as a wildcard team. Still, something's not quite right when the UCI standings can distort the results of a whole season so glaringly.

Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara bade farewell to the pro peloton on the same day that Villella won the aforementioned Japan Cup – calling time on an illustrious career that included a hat-trick of wins in both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, not to mention four World Championships ITT gold medals and seven Tour stage wins.

Fittingly for a rider who amassed more days in the maillot jaune than any other rider not to have ever won the Tour, Cancellara's Trek-Segafredo team tweaked their trademark "cappuccino" jersey so that the white milky froth was bright, radioactive yellow in Utsunomiya.

Also sporting a different jersey on their last ever collective appearance were the Tinkoff team of world champion Peter Sagan and stuttering Spaniard Alberto Contador.

For their last outing as a professional cycling team, Tinkoff took a trip down memory lane with a special "farewell" kit inspired by the first ever Tinkoff Credit Systems kit one decade ago – when billionaire owner Oleg Tinkov first arrived on the scene.

Oddly, being Slovakian national champion wasn't enough to earn Juraj Sagan his own version of the kit – adding a token flag motif clearly too much to ask for the designers behind the retro strip.

It was a rather low-key end to a Tinkoff team which had otherwise trousered 34 wins in 2016: their best placed rider on the fourth and final stage was Erik Kolar in 10th, although Contador did take fifth place overall after a solid if unspectacular performance on the Jebel Hafeet climb in stage three.

Contador – recently branded a "lame duck" by an irascible Tinkov – was clearly happy to be riding his final race in the colours of a team whose owner has proved himself to be the Marmite of the cycling world over the past 10 years.

The Abu Dhabi Tour will be Tinkoff's last collective outing before the pipeline from the East is turned off. Next week Peter Sagan will ride in the Saitama criterium to bring down the iron curtain officially on Tinkov's team – although the world champion will be sporting the rainbow stripes and not any kind of La Datcha-themed monstrosity.

Contador, who has showed remarkable restraint not to take Tinkov's bait, simply wished the media "happy holidays" in his final outing before moving on to Trek-Segafredo in 2017. Should Trek keep their new bright yellow glean to their kit, then perhaps Contador's shoulders will be covered in yellow again after all.

Also enjoying his final ride for a team with which his relations have, at times, been rock bottom was Italy's Vincenzo Nibali, who helped set up Astana team-mate Tanel Kangert for victory in stage 3 at Abu Dhabi.

Unlike Contador, Nibali – who will join the new Bahrain-Merida outfit for 2017 – seemed to leave his current employers on good terms, claiming Kangert's win was "a kind of farewell gift" from him.

"Tanel is a really nice guy. On lots of occasions he's dug deep to help me win and helped me win some of my biggest victories, including the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France. This win means a lot for him and we're happy that he won, that the Astana team won too," Nibali said.

Elsewhere, Astana were also on song in the Tour of Hainan with Ruslan Tleubayev and Alexey Lutsenko delivering a one-two in stage 2 on Sunday. And judging by the sounds on the video, Tleubayev's mother was in the crowd at the finish line to watch her son take the win...