I thought Steve's only concern was with beating Tommy Godwin's year record. Any competition from others was a side-show, as far as he was concerned.
Is that right? That beating Godwin's record is not only his primary goal, but that he won't be bothered if having done so, he loses it again a week later?
Actually, I don't think Steve would be remotely bothered if he held the record only for a short time. From a psychological point of view, I try to put myself in Steve's position and I don't think I would either. I would take a lot of satisfaction that, firstly, I had broken the record and secondly, that my spadework had motivated an even stronger cyclist to have a crack at the record, and that a set of rules had become established by which future attempts could be made.
What would piss me off greatly is if I had beaten Tommy only to find that some other guy, albeit a monster cyclist himself, had used my ride as a pacemaker, accelerating in the last couple of weeks of 2015, and thereby depriving me of the record. I'm pretty sure Steve is a better person than I am so he may not be bothered by this.
Many moons ago, there was a long distance runner by the name of Dave Bedford. (*googles*). Thought so. 10,000 metres was his speciality and he held the World Record. His big trouble was that he had no sprint finish and all the other buggers used him as a pacemaker, leaving him well behind in the final lap. If he set a fast enough pace, he could break lesser athletes on the way round but it didn't happen in the big events.
Obviously, Tarzan is not there physically, riding just at Steve's right shoulder, but it does give a similar impression. Within the rules, of course, but when we support Sportsman A in favour of Sportsman B, it's not normally their exploits in the sport itself which attracts us to them because they are often very hard to separate (I can't remember which cricketer/commentator coined the phrase about the world's best batsman at any one time: "You can't normally separate the top six"). It's usually something else.
Edit: I have a suspicion that if Tommy were here to ask, he would be disappointed that no-one had had a crack until now. It was a lovely touch that his children sent Steve such an encouraging message.