Only caught the last 30 mins on Eurosport, he looked to be on the limit in the last 10 mins. Well done Brad, 55 would have been nice but 54.5 will keep the others thinking for a while, especially with the obvious pain to do it.
A very interesting special "Les Rois de la Pédale" just after the record with Roger Legeay as a guest, discussing who might go after Brad, talking about his career and in passing wondering why Chris Froome doesn't have the same charisma. Legeay brought up the old potatoe of the machines not being the same for Merckx and Brad, thus putting the record out of reach of the non-specialist trackies and clm riders. Funny but no-one makes the same arguement with Lucien Petit-Breton (who also raced track and road). I can already hear the cries "Record deleted; no doping controls, machine not UCI approved! Come back next year please!". A nice touch was the footage of Peter Kennaugh winning today's stage of the Criterium, along with the talk about UK cycling - no mention of Cav in the charisma stakes though, although he probably gets more regular airtime than any other Brit rider on the continent.
