For someone who only took up cycling as a means of rehabilitation for a knee injury, Simon Gerrans has come a long way - so far, in fact, that the 33-year-old Victorian has become one of Australian cycling's greatest ever riders.
Gerrans' stage win in the 100th Tour de France on Monday and his claim to the race leader's yellow jersey on Tuesday when his Orica-GreenEDGE team won the 25-kilometre stage four-team time trial in Nice are the hallmark results of his career.
Simon Gerrans celebrates his yellow jersey win on the podium in Nice.Credit: Reuters
They also come off the back of a successful season that so far includes a stage victory in the Tour Down Under in South Australia, the Volta a Catalunya and Vuelta al Pais Vasco races in Spain, third place in the Dutch Amstel Gold Race and 10th in Belgium's Liege-Bastogne-Liege classic.
Gerrans, who was raised in Mansfield, Victoria, but now lives in Monaco with his wife Rhana and their children during the season and in Melbourne when he returns to Australia, became known as an opportunist after turning professional in 2005 with the French Ag2r team.
But since then, in which he has also ridden for the Credit Agricole, Cervelo and Sky teams before joining Orica-GreenEDGE last year as a foundation recruit, his "palmares" (cycling parlance for career results) are rich in quality for their wins.
However, no one could have forecast Gerrans' success when, at age 17 and living in Mansfield, he met Australian legend Phil Anderson, who in 1981 became the first Australian to claim the Tour's yellow jersey and was then a resident of nearby Jameison in north-east Victoria.
Anderson introduced Gerrans to cycling, lending him a bike to ride as part of his rehabilitation from a knee operation after a moto-cross accident.
Gerrans, whose diminutive 64-kilogram, 170-centimetre frame, belies the size and strength of his heart, first rode the Tour in 2005 finishing 126th overall at 3 hours, 27 minutes and 3 seconds to winner Lance Armstrong.
But it was in 2008 that the former Australian Institute of Sport scholarship holder, whose gritty competitive fire is matched by his intelligent read of a race, won his first stage in the Tour - in a breakaway that stayed away to the finish line at the Alpine summit of Prato Nevoso in Italy.
Then in 2009, the 2008 and 2012 Olympian in the road race became the first Australian to win a stage in all three grand tours with his stage 14 win in the Giro d'Italia and stage 10 victory in the Vuelta a Espana.
However, until this week, Gerrans' greatest victory was in the 2012 Milan-San Remo classic, regarded as the first of cycling's five one-day "monuments" that gave the Orica-GreenEDGE team a huge kick-start to its first season in Europe.
Gerrans' victory in that 298-kilometre race was also only the second by an Australian – the first being in 2011 by his Tasmanian teammate Matt Goss.
In Australia, Gerrans has won the biggest events, including the Tour Down Under in South Australia in 2006 and 2012 when his Orica-GreenEDGE team made its World Tour debut and just after he won the national road championship.
He has also won the Herald Sun Tour twice (2005, 2006), and before he turned professional the Melbourne to Warrnambool classic (2003) and Tour of Tasmania (2002).
Twitter: @rupertguinness