Tour de France: Bradley Wiggins tightens his grip on yellow jersey

Wiggins (Team Sky) clocked 51 minutes 24 seconds to triumph on the 41.5-kilometre race against the clock from Arc-et-Senans to Besancon, enhancing his hold on the fabled maillot jaune with his first Tour stage success. The 32-year-old triple Olympic gold medal winner now leads defending champion Cadel Evans (BMC Racing) by 1min 53secs entering the Tour’s first rest day today.

Evans went into yesterday ten seconds behind Wiggins but finished sixth on the stage to lose 1:43 as the Briton took pole position in the race to Paris on 22 July.

Wiggins’ team-mate Chris Froome placed second in 51:59 to move up to third overall, 2:07 behind. Despite his comfortable lead ahead of Wednesday’s resumption, the 194.5km tenth stage from Macon to Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, Wiggins is taking nothing for granted. “It’s never over until the fat lady sings and she hasn’t entered the room yet,” Wiggins said. “This is just another day at the Tour. There’s a long way to go. It’s a fantastic position to be in, but there’s always the possibility of a bad day. This race is far from over. Cadel is not going to give up until Paris.”

Froome displaced Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas-Cannondale) in the top three, with the Italian 2:23 adrift in fourth and Evans Team Sky’s nearest rival. Wiggins added: “Cadel is far from finished. He will fight every inch of the way and I’m only human, I’m not a machine, there’s always the possibility of a bad day. So far, so good and we’ll just continue doing what we’re doing.

“It’s about being good for 21 days. I’ve been consistently good for the last few days and I have a good lead now. It’s just about not getting too carried away. We have to forget about this very fast – you start dwelling on your success and that’s when things start going wrong. We get back up in two days’ time and start from zero again.”

Wiggins received the backing of Team Sky principal Dave Brailsford for his expletive-laden rant after stage seven in response to anonymous critics’ claims success in cycling is based on doping.

Speaking to French television immediately after his win, he said: “I’m not sorry, it was my passion coming through.”

Wiggins has already won the Paris-Nice, Tour de Romandie and Criterium du Dauphine stage races this season and is now in pole position to be the first British Tour winner – and Froome could join him on the podium. Much of his current success is owed to his proficiency against the clock, and he led at every time check yesterday in a scintillating display.

The 99th edition of the Tour features over 100km of time-trials and the 53.5km test which takes place on 21 July, the penultimate day of the race, is the final opportunity to take time – the Alps and Pyrenees must be negotiated first, though. It was also a useful pointer for the 44km 1 August Olympic time-trial. Wiggins and Froome are Britain’s Olympic time-trial selections and beat 2008 Games champion Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack-Nissan) into third.