....THIS WHEEL'S ON FIRE ..........

.....The height of ambition for any professional road-racing cyclist , probably the highlight of his career , is , if he is lucky ,to maybe one day win a stage of the Tour de France . Within the last three weeks Team Sky have become the first professional team from the UK to ever win a stage ( loosing team leader Bradley Wiggins the following day to a broken collar bone ) . Cadel Evans , a pre-race favorite and the 2009 Road Race World champion , has won his second ever stage , his first on the open road......and gone on to win the race for the first time.  The previous record holder of stages from the UK was Barry Hoban , who won a total of eight stages over his career.

Within the last three weeks Mark Cavendish has now won his 16th , 17th , 18th, 19th and 20th stages , and the green jersey into the bargain.

Cavendish is the first rider in the history of the race to have won four stages in each of four consecutive Tours.

Cavendish is the first rider to have won three consecutive final stages in Paris .

Cavendish is the first rider from the Uk to win the Green Jersey.

Cavendish is the Real Deal..............

.....The UK , particularly the English , have a curiously ambivalent attitude towards their sporting heroes.............

Favorites are ' The Gallant Losers '..........Henry Cooper will forever be remembered for his bloodily ' heroic ' defeat at the hands of Mohamed Ali , Stirling Moss remembered as ' The Best Racing Driver Never To Win The F1 World Championship ' , Mike Hawthorn ( the first British driver to become F1 champion ) long forgotten . ' Plucky ' Ricky Hatton took 35,000 fans to Vegas in 2009 , only for them to see his career destroyed in the first two rounds by Manny Pacquiao .....they cheered him out , they cheered him back...........

Then there are the ' Good , Just Not Good Enough ' ..........entire forests of newsprint are consumed every year as the public and the press follow Andy Murray And Mother in their increasingly futile quest to win Wimbledon ( or any Grand Slam title )......a relationship echoed in the film ' The Black Swan ' as the mother lives out the hopes of her own career through that of the son / daughter.. Tim Henman - sans mother - likewise carried the burden of expectation.

The ' Just Rubbish '...........What passes for the English Football Team sets sail every other year to a European or World tournament on a totally unfounded tide of optimism , hope , flags and funny hats , only to return , inevitably , some three weeks later - as failures yet again - to howls of derision , citing ' tiredness ' . ' lack of preparation ', ' bad luck ' , ' injuries ' etc..........sheer ineptness is never mentioned . The whole circus then starts again , on yet more unfounded optimism - ' this time it will be different '  ..........

And ,  ' If You Can't Beat Them , Join Them '  - the English Rugby team have elected to play in an all-black strip at the next Rugby World Cup - in New Zealand............. 

Mark Cavendish won six stages in the Tour de France in 2009 , unprecedented for a rider from the UK. The BBC Sports Personality of the Year that year was one Ryan Giggs, who achieved nothing much of note other than being a member of a reasonable football team - and in hindsight probably remembered more for his achievements off the field rather than on it. Cavendish won a further five stages in 2010 ; that year the Sports Personality was a jockey, again being selected for his overall career achievements rather than any singular event within the year. The runners up included a darts player ; Cavendish wasn't even placed.

Will Cavendish be Sports Personality this year ?  Probably not , it most likely being a golfer from Northern Ireland - take your pick ; golf has a huge fanbase in the UK , much bigger than cycling ........or it might be a boxer .......or a cricketer..........or a darts player ............or a horse.

We'll see..............in the meantime , just enjoy him - they don't come along like him too often.

Mark Cavendish at the roll-out from our home town in the Bearn at the start of Stage 19 in the 2010 Tour. Some four  hours later he won the stage in a sprint finish up in Bordeaux .