The Moment, the seeds of a journey that were first planted some 16 years ago, happened along a nondescript industrial road with forest on one side and an overgrown grass field on the other, a kilometre away from a village of 1,200 inhabitants that until it hosted the Tour de France for the first ever time, was just like the many thousands of other small routine French settlements: largely forgettable. 

But as the sun burned through the clouds that had given rain earlier in the afternoon, Saint-Vulbas was about to become synonymous with history. The Moment came at 17:38 CET on July 3, 2024, when Mark Cavendish surged through a crowded peloton, darting right and then left, and charged towards history, a 35th victory in the Tour de France, surpassing the record he had shared with Eddy Merckx for the past three years.

A few hundred metres back, where the recently-asphalted road gradually bent to the right, one of Cavendish’s principal helpers, Davide Ballerini, a man who delivered him to four Tour stage victories in 2021, slammed on his brakes and parked up at the side of the barriers. His work was done, and he was now like the millions of fans watching around the world. “I stopped riding at 300 metres to the finish and looked up at the TV screen,” the Italian told Cycling Weekly. 

This article was published on Cycling Weekly in July 2024. You can read the full article here.