Watch Paparazzi

Athlete Mark Cavendish spotted wearing Richard Mille

Mark Cavendish, the most decorated sprint cyclist in Tour de France history, was recently spotted wearing a Richard Mille RM67-02 Automatic that stands apart from every other example in existence. Finished with orange details that directly reference his former Bahrain McLaren team livery, the piece is believed to be a unique commission produced exclusively for Cavendish during his time competing for the squad — making it effectively priceless on the open market.

The Richard Mille RM67-02 was introduced as the brand's answer to a specific athletic brief: a wearable, ultra-slim automatic calibre capable of surviving professional sport. The case architecture combines Black Quartz TPT — a silica-based composite layered at varying angles to create its distinctive marbled appearance — with Carbon TPT for the bezel, caseband, and caseback assembly. The result is a total bezel-to-caseback thickness of just 7.8mm and an overall weight of 32 grams. That figure is extraordinary for an automatic movement of this complexity. The in-house CRMA7 calibre, a skeletonised automatic with variable geometry rotor, sits inside and delivers roughly 50 hours of power reserve.

For collectors, the RM67-02 occupies a serious position in the Richard Mille catalogue. It was conceived as the thinnest automatic sports watch the manufacture had produced at launch, and its athlete-edition variants — including those made for sprinter Wayde van Niekerk and high jumper Mutaz Barshim — have become benchmarks for the series. Cavendish's piece, however, exists outside the standard athlete edition framework. The Bahrain McLaren colourway places it in a rarefied category of single-commission sports partnership watches that Richard Mille occasionally produces but almost never sells publicly.

Cavendish's relationship with performance equipment is well documented. A rider who broke Eddy Merckx's long-standing stage win record at the 2021 Tour de France, he has always been exacting about marginal gains — so a 32-gram timepiece aligned precisely with his team's aesthetic is entirely consistent with his approach to detail.

The standard Richard Mille RM67-02 Automatic retails at $141,200 USD. On the secondary market, clean examples in standard configurations trade above retail, often in the $160,000–$185,000 range depending on variant. Cavendish's orange-detailed Bahrain McLaren edition carries no official price because it was never offered for sale — its value, should it ever surface, would be determined entirely by the room.