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.
