Cavendish out of hospital after collapsed lung

Mark Cavendish has been discharged from the hospital where he was convalescing from a collapsed lung incurred in a track cycling crash and is back home in England, according to Belgian media.

Cavendish rides for Belgian team Deceuninck Quick-Step and was left with two broken ribs and a collapsed lung last Sunday when crashing at the popular track event, the Six Days of Ghent.

"The collapsed lung developed very positively and he was able to leave the University Hospital," daily newspaper Het Nieuwsblad said on Thursday.

The report said Cavendish's wife had driven the 36-year-old Manxman back to their home in Essex.

There are still doubts as to where Cavendish will race next season amid contract talks.

"You can't put a contract under the nose of a man in a hospital bed," Cavendish's team boss Patrick Lefevere said earlier in the week.

The rider wants to stay in cycling after his racing days are over, as a team director, and also wants to ride one final road-race season, according to Lefevere.

Acclaimed as the all-time great Tour de France sprinter by the organisers he has a record equalling 34 stage wins on the race to back up that belief.

He won four of them while earning minimal wages with Deceuninck Quick-Step last season, although he had added income from individual sponsorship.

Cavendish was riding in the Madison on Sunday when Danish world and Olympic champion Lasse Norman Hansen crashed in front of him after Gerben Thijssen slipped on a wet patch on the track.