Mark Cavendish will officially move to Astana Kazakstan in 2023, La Gazzetta dello Sport reported on Sunday, and Cyclingnews has learned that director Alexandre Vinokurov is first learned that he is interested in signing 37-year-old Mark Cavendish, who is just one win away from breaking Eddy Merckx's record of 34 Tour de France stage victories.

The Astana team did not confirm this report when questioned by Cycling News.

According to the Italian outlet, Cavendish is headed to Calpe, Spain, to attend Astana's team camp and will get his new Willières Triestina team bike on Monday.

Thus, the long saga of where Cavendish will race in 2023 is apparently over, but nothing is certain until the team makes it public.

Cavendish made an impressive comeback from years of illness and injury in 2021 when he signed a last-minute, one-year contract with DeTuning Quick Step. A late addition to the team as a replacement for the injured Sam Bennett, he won four stages of the Tour de France and the green jersey in his first year.

However, Cavendish was dropped from the Quick-Step team for the 2022 Tour de France to allow Dutch sprinter Fabio Jacobsen to gain more experience at the Tour de France. It later became clear that the team would not extend his contract for 2023, but he expressed interest in continuing to race for another two seasons.

A relationship with the B&B Hotels-KTM team was also rumored, but the project fell through when manager Jérôme Pinault was unable to secure the sponsorship needed to raise the profile of the team with Cavendish.

Less than a week later, Peter Kennaugh said on his podcast that Cavendish had "definitely signed" a contract for 2023. A day later, Vinokurov told Cycling News that he contacted Cavendish as soon as he heard that the French team had collapsed.

"I called him and said if he was free we could talk. It's true he's 35 or 36, but what really matters is if he's willing to do it. I won the Olympics at almost 40," Vinokurov said.

In 2022, Astana will no doubt be in need of fresh blood, having won only five races at the World Tour level and finishing last among world teams in the UCI rankings. Lopez was the top scorer along with the now retired Vincenzo Nibali.

The team returned Spaniard Luis Leon Sanchez from Bahrain Victorious, but has not officially signed any other big names.

La Gazzetta dello Sport also reported that Cees Bol of Team DSM, winner of the Nokère Coase and winner of Paris-Nice and Tour of Britain, has signed with the Astana team. Bol was also rumored to be linked to the 2023 B&B Hotels team.

However, Astana has 29 players on its roster, with a maximum of 30, so it cannot sign both players unless they choose to retire, move to a development team, or be fired, as Miguel Angel Lopez did.