Until recently reliant on Italian producers for his carbon-fibre frames, last year Merckx opened his own factory near France, “a joint venture with an Italian company equipped with a state-of-the-art autoclave for making carbon-fibre frames,” Merckx told CNBC European Business. The frames are then transported to Belgium and finished at Merckx’s HQ, where he now employs 30 experts. He points out that even the components found on Merckx bikes are mostly European, from Italian Campagnolo running gear to German-made, Continental tyres.

Unsurprisingly, the resulting machines are positioned at the high-end of the market. Merckx makes a mere 6,000 bikes a year – roughly the same number of Ferraris coming out of Maranello – and because they cost between €2,000 and €10,000, he targets the wealthiest enthusiasts via distributors in 21 countries including South Korea and Russia. His largest market is North America, but the weak dollar and muscular euro have prompted a recent push into cash-rich emerging markets such as Qatar, where cycling and pro-racing are in their infancy.

Inevitably, conversations with Merckx turn to former glories. He says, without the slightest hesitation, that his greatest moment was “my first Tour de France win in 1969”. In that year Merckx not only won the race, but uniquely held all its various jerseys, for points, sprints, climbing and leading the overall classification.

Merckx won the Tour four more times, level-pedalling with Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain. Seven-times winner Lance Armstrong may have eclipsed them all (and in regards to his near-death from cancer he is incomparable) but ‘The Cannibal’, as Merckx was nicknamed, gobbled up an extraordinary range of prizes in major events that Armstrong scarcely bothered to contest.

In 1971, at the peak of his career, Merckx contested 120 races and won 54. The era’s grueling (and less Tour-fixated) schedule may explain why he retired at the age of 32. The oldest rider in the 2008 Tour was the Ag2r-La Mondiale team’s Stéphane Goubert who is 38.

A friend of Armstrong’s, Merckx still maintains that he rode more aggressively than the Texan. The same attitudes have served him well in business.

• The global market for bicycles is worth $61bn per annum.
• China makes 73 million of the 100 million units made annually.
• Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest single seller of bikes shifting eight million a year, at an average price of just €45 each, half the price of an Elite Custom Carbon bottle cage.
• Vélib’, the bike-by-the-half-hour rental scheme in Paris, was instrumental in getting Bertrand Delanoë re-elected as mayor. Delanoë’s 2007 decision to site 20,000 credit card released roadsters across central Paris is now a role model for cities across the world. London, Montreal, Rome, New York and more are setting up Vélib’-style schemes.
• Svelte roadbikes ridden by skinny pro cyclists might be sex-on-stick popular in many parts of Europe but it’s urban bicycles that look set for the big-time. Fuel prices and health worries are getting increasing numbers of Europeans cycling to work, even in countries where the car has hitherto been king, such as the UK.
• T-Mobile pulled out of sponsoring a pro cycling team in November 2007. Meanwhile, Nokia has pumped €250,000 into Britain’s ‘Bike Week’, a celebration of cycling as transport and family fun. The Finnish company started life as a rubber manufacturer, and Nokian, which split from Nokia in 1988, still makes bike tyres, but the telecoms brand is sponsoring cycling to promote its pedestrian and cycle sat-nav phones.