He is without question a special athlete - proven by his magnificent podium finish in the 2020 Tour de France.

A fair swag of Australians are obsessed about sport, but too often we equate or limit our view of success with winning. We need to re-visit that pre-conception, but in any case standing on the victory dais of Le Tour in any position is most definitely a win.

Porte himself has proven many times that this is a feat of skill and endurance during which all manner of things can go wrong.

He has finally conquered in a big way.

Ten years ago, then 25, he wore for a few days the maglia rosa as overall leader of the Giro D'Italia, a race second only to Le Tour. It was his coming of age.

His story up to and since then has surely been inspirational for any young Tasmanian looking to succeed in their chosen field.

It was extraordinary stuff then and we could rightly be proud of the boy. Now we can honour the man.

The Richie Porte story had begun a bit over two years earlier when Adelaide's Tour Down Under came of age in January 2008 by celebrating the acquisition of UCI ProTour status.

And for Porte, it all happened by a fortunate set of circumstances.

The UCI bent its rules and allowed Cycling Australia to enter a national squad as an additional team in the race.

Then CA decided that the final place in the team would go to the highest placed rider from the national championships then not already in the race.

Enter Porte into the equation. He had finished a creditable fourth in the titles held two weeks beforehand, but as it happened, behind the already-committed Matthew Lloyd and Adam Hansen and the fortunately unavailable Rory Sutherland.

Let the fairy tale begin.

On day one of the Tour proper, Porte made an immediate and courageous bid to earn instant recognition in international road cycling as part of a three-man, 86-kilometre breakaway, that fell agonisingly short of stage victory three kilometres from home.

There was a portent of what has since emerged, when Porte stoically stuck with his chasers to finish the stage with the field, ending the day in sixth spot.

It was a considerable achievement for a young rider who had returned disillusioned from his first real European experience the previous year. And his then-team boss - the canny coach and mentor of young riders, Dave Sanders knew it.

"Richie was afraid of no one out there and he was riding against some of the very best in the world. He set the race up for the rest of our team - they didn't have to do any work. He has earned the respect of everyone for what he did today," Sanders said at the time.

Also, confirmed by his mother Penny this week, Porte confessed to having been a race cyclist only since April 2006 - and a serious one for just the previous sixth months.

Within six days, by the end of that 2008 Tour Down Under, he was a serious player. Porte had come from close to obscurity on the national scene to finish ninth on general classification in a UCI ProTour race, just 41 seconds from the winner. That first-day effort had proven to be no cameo.

Sanders summed up the Tassie rider's first major tour appearance.

"Here is a boy who two weeks ago would have regarded himself as a good local rider and then suddenly his imagination has been opened way beyond anything he would have dreamed about."

Clearly the world was potentially Porte's oyster and he decided to give the sport a real go. From getting most things wrong, he suddenly got it right, even if just by being in the right place at the right time.

Talking to Porte then was like chatting with a wide-eyed kid,

"That sprint on Friday was just amazing - those guys were going so fast - 70ks per hour - I couldn't believe I was in the thick of it."

Just a few days before he turned 23, Porte cheekily observed that it looked like people were starting to notice him and he might not only be riding in Tassie from then on.

He certainly had that right in every respect.

Porte has never kept where he's from a secret, no better exemplified by Le Tour's English-speaking announcer who prefixed his introduction to the crowd with the words "from Launceston, Tasmania, Australia".