Bradley Wiggins set for Tour of Britain lap of honour

By MATT McGEEHAN
Published on 08/09/2012 01:19

TOUR de France winner and four-time Olympic champion Bradley Wiggins will tomorrow begin a nationwide lap of honour in the Tour of Britain.

The 32-year-old, on 22 July, became the first British winner of the Tour’s fabled yellow jersey and on 1 August claimed Olympic time-trial gold at Hampton Court, sparking Wiggins fever across the nation.

Wiggins, one of the favourites for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year prize, will miss Monday’s Olympic and Paralympic parade while on his bike and has been told to savour every moment of the eight-day Tour around Britain, which begins in Ipswich tomorrow and finishes in Guildford a week later. Team Sky head coach Shane Sutton, Wiggins’ mentor, said: “I hope he goes out there and enjoys the moment. I think it’s been tough for him to sit down and enjoy the enormity of his success.

“The Tour of Britain is a really good place to soak it up and enjoy what he’s achieved. It’s not about Brad going out and winning the Tour of Britain. It’s about Brad going out and showing himself to the people there to see the Tour de France winner. Brad wants to go out, show himself to the public and pay tribute to the millions of fans that have supported him on the journey.”

Wiggins has been named in Team Sky’s six-man squad alongside fellow Britons Jeremy Hunt, Luke Rowe and Mark Cavendish, the world champion who is rumoured to be negotiating an exit from the British team. Bernhard Eisel and Christian Knees complete the line-up.

Cavendish, 23 times a Tour de France stage winner, signed a three-year deal last October after winning the road World Championships in Copenhagen, but it appears his ambitions do not match those of Team Sky. Sutton would not be drawn on the subject of Cavendish’s future. “That’s just speculation at this moment in time,” he said. “All I know is Mark is a Sky rider, he’s under contract with Sky. We’ve got the fastest guy in the world on the squad and who knows what’s going to happen in the future?”