Cavendish is a great sprinter and deserves tremendous credit for all the stages he's won. But he's never going to win a big stage race like Le Tour, Giro, Vuelta etc and as such can never be regarded as one the absolute top cyclists out there. For me winning one mountain top stage to Alpe D'huez beats any number of flat sprints you want to mention. Nothing against Cavendish. Just feel he gets too much attention when in this sort of race he's out the back half the time.