Eddy Merckx won the Tour de France for the first time in his career a week or so after I was born. And although my Mum and Dad tell me I was hoisted out of my cot to watch the lunar landing on TV (it was on the exact same day that Merckx made it to Paris in yellow), I am pretty sure that I was unaware, aged 9 days, of the significance of Merckx’s ascent to the throne; a first of five race wins sealed with victory in stage 22b, an individual time trial in Paris which he won by 53 seconds ahead of Raymond Poulidor. It was his 7th win of the Tour (if you include the team time trial). Three of those other wins were in time trials.
Famously, Merckx would go on to win 34 stages in total. He also picked up three green jerseys and two king of the mountains; collateral success to accompany his five Tour wins.
All of this success pre-dates almost our collective memories. And even if you were of a sentient age during the Merckxian Age of Terrors, the television coverage of the race was patchy at best, or even (in the case of the UK) largely non-existent. Merckx might as well have been racing on the moon.
So it is down to us to imagine experiencing him at his violent best; to put ourselves in the position of those fans and spectators witnessing a once-in-a-century talent re-define the possible. Cycling fans are hopeless nostalgists for the most part, fetishising the look and texture of races and teams of yesteryear, and that famous dirty orange Molteni kit that Merckx wore is one of the most enduringly and affectionately remembered jerseys of all time. What, we think to ourselves, must it have been like to have seen Merckx flying up in his pomp? Deep down, we are jealous of those original witnesses, and hold our own era up as a pale comparison.
And yet, we are right in the thick of it again. But because it’s happening in front of our eyes, we cannot process its significance. But the “New Merckx” is real, and he’s wearing the yellow jersey, leading the race after two weeks by the kind of time gap you’d have associated with the 1970s and not so much with recent history.
So, though it is always preferable that a Tour is unpredictable and close to the end, there is another style of result that speaks to history in a different manner. You can be sure that, fifty years hence, the sport’s historians will have dedicated a particular flourish for these years when Tadej Pogačar, a world champion for the first time finally threw off the chain that had hitherto bound him to the tenacious and super talented Jonas Vingegaard. If 2024’s win was replete with mitigating circumstances, 2025’s was simply crushing. And if he can go on to pick up a Vuelta a España title, and perhaps another world title in Rwanda, then all that remains for him is the piffling matter of cracking Mathieu van der Poel in Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix.
In summary, put aside any possible lingering disappointment about the current state of the race and simply sit back and enjoy it. You’ll be sorry if you miss it.
