Despite being 39 years old, Greg Henderson is arguably just as good as ever, producing a strong candidate for leafout of the season to help Andre Greipel take a big win for their Lotto-Soudal team at the Giro this year. The New Zealander says he had an agreement with the team before the Tour but an injury and laziness prevented him from announcing the deal before yesterday. His team confirmed the extension in a press release yesterday.

“There was a verbal agreement before the Tour and then I signed a letter of intent during the race,” he said on Friday in an interview with CyclingTips. “I was going to get it all teed away at the Tour but I crashed out, was in hospital and all that carry on. I signed the full contract a couple of months ago now. But I just really haven’t got off my arse and made it public.”

Despite his great leadouts this year, he crashed hard in the opening road stages of the Tour de France and eventually had to abandon, which he said left him feeling really demoralized.

“That is why I rode three days with broken ribs and whatever else I had going on. I wanted to just hope, day by day, that I would get better. I tried and tried to carry on. But in actual fact I was getting worse.”

“For a couple of weeks after I was mentally really down because I couldn’t do anything other than lie on the couch and watch the Tour.”

He returned in the Eneco Tour, Vatenfall and the Canadian races before making his national team for the Worlds, which he says went really well for him for a sprinter on a hard course on a small team.

“I had a really good worlds,” he said. “I was really happy with how that went. Obviously I couldn’t follow on the second-last climb, I rolled in with a group that was about 40 seconds down. But I followed everything I could manage to follow right up until two climbs to go.”

“It was a pretty good world championships for me. It was a really hard circuit. Those three times consecutively up the hills so close to the finish is what really took a lot of the pure, pure sprinters out of it.”

Talk quickly turned to Greipel, who has produced 16 wins this year, as well as a career best 4 Tour de France stage wins. Henderson says he always had it in him, things just went the German’s way this year.

“I am not sure that he has done anything extra,” he said, when asked what the German had done differently this season. “It is just that he is consistently a hard worker, and it pays off. There is no substitute for hard work.”

“I don’t think you can attribute any majorly differences. It was just the timing of everything, and he is always in good condition for the right time.”

Despite his age, Henderson insists that, just like his leader, he too still has world-class speed about himself and expects his leadouts to be just as good in 2016 as they were this year.

“Bar the Tour, I was really happy with how it went,” he said. “[Especially] some of the form I had in the early season, such as the leadouts in Paris-Nice and the Giro… The speed and the distance I can go for is still world class. I was in great condition for the Tour also, but I never really got to show much there.”

After a long time in the peloton, Henderson knows his body and what constitutes a good year. For him to say this was his best season, that says it all.

“I think in terms of success, that would probably be my biggest this season, getting back to a high level for the world championships.”