In my favourite sport, Cycling, suffering has long been venerated.

The imagery includes stories of Hinault riding through a snow-storm with frostbite.

Or Pantani fighting his inner daemons (a battle he sadly later lost) to summit a mountain with his arms held wide like “Christ on the cross”.

The great Irish rider Sean Kelly once pulled down his shorts to show a journalist a saddle sore the size of an egg when asked why he wasn’t as good as expected.

I often speculated if it’s a coincidence that Cycling as a sport is traditionally most popular in catholic countries such as Italy, Spain, France and Belgium.