To win a Tour stage at 39 is a stunning feat of endurance in a sport where many careers last less than two years

In 2007, when Mark Cavendish made his Tour de France debut, there was plenty of expectation that the youth from the Isle of Man would produce special things on his bike, but longevity was never mentioned. Professional cycling is a world where the average career is said to last two and half years, where most professionals don’t get past their initial two-year contract, and merely to win one race is an achievement. To win a Tour stage is still viewed as the crowning glory for most, and to keep racing into the early 30s is a big ask. So where, then, do you rank winning 35 Tour de France stages, over a span of 17 seasons, and to be still winning at 39, let alone breaking the Tour stage-winning record held by Eddy Merckx?

The answer is, you don’t. You think back to where you were 17 years ago – when Tony Blair was a very recent memory, Sven-Göran Eriksson and Lance Armstrong slightly less recent, and Boris Johnson had only been sacked from a couple of prominent roles – and you think forward to where you are today, you compare the two, and you wonder. Which of us can maintain the drive to excel at anything for that long? And then you reflect on what it must take to persist so stubbornly at something as frankly insane as sprinting from a bunch in the Tour de France, something where the risks are blindingly obvious – just ask Fabio Jakobsen to name one – and the rewards magnificent but so often elusive.