Is he really better?
From Merckx's wikipedia page
In 1996 Albert II of Belgium, King of the Belgians, gave him the title of baron. In Italy, Merckx was given the title of Cavaliere. In 2011, he was named Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur by then French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris.
Belgium isn't a real country. It's literally a part of France thats been annexed by the Flemish.
Anyway, its all over. He won his last race (another thing merckx didn't achieve) & now he can go all bananas (get it?) in his retirement & become king of the isle of Man or whatever it is they do there.
I'm not sure what i'll miss more, seeing Cav in the peloton or writing many, many posts about how he's finished & will never amount to much. (He was only good because of HTC, he'll never win anything with sky, he'll finish with quickstep, data dimension? good lord this is grim, nice of quickstep to give him one last pay day, Astana? really?)
I was at the tour de france presentation in 2007 in London. I remember the crowd going mental for G & for Cav & i had no idea who they were ( i think I was vaguely aware of Cav). If you told me then that 10-15 years later I'd be heavily emotionally invested in their careers, I'd have punched you for being stupid.
Project 35 - I've been emotionally invested in that for years. I've spent more time thinking about that than he has. So well deserved, he's a great bloke off the bike*.
& here we are. Its been a journey. Farewell Cav.
(*he's going to start having dodgy opinions on Twitter now isnt he?)