Taking a team sky bike to the limit

Bradley Wiggins, The First Brit to Win the Tour de France

Bradley Wiggins of the British Sky team created history yesterday (Sunday the 22 July 2012) by becoming the first British winner of theTour de France.  Wiggins who came a surprise 4 th in the event in 2010 but crashed out early in last year’s race, had set the 2012 event as his big chance with a course that played to his strengths he went in as the favourite and from day one he didn’t disappoint.

Bradley Wiggins First British Rider to Win The Tour de France

 

On paper and going into the event it was thought of as a  two-man battle between Wiggins and defending champion Australian Cadel Evans. However Bradley took the ascendance from the prologue in Liège where his second place behind Fabian Cancellera was more than enough to mean Cadel was left chasing.  And Cadel did fight for nearly two weeks but it was a losing battle and the Australian eventually finished way off the pace.

 

That left  Wiggins teammate Chris Froome as his closest rival, and despite a few surges in the mountains and some twitter cat fighting from the spouses the super domestic played an excellent support role to his captain. Froome  finish second overall to match his best grand tour ride of second place in the Tour of Spain last year. Froome was 3:21 in arrears to Wiggin’s at Paris the difference between the two men in the TT’s .

 

Vincenzo Nibali, was third overall, but had made a great race of it attacking in the mountains at every opportunity, but he found it tough-going against such a well drilled Sky machine and on the time-trial-friendly parcours.  However he did became the first Italian to step onto the podium since Ivan Basso in 2005. His team mate Peter Sagan also had a great tour winning 3 stages and easily winning the Green Jersey as best sprinter.

 

The Polka Dot jersey went to Frenchman Thomas Voeckler of the French Eurocar team to give the host nation plenty to cheer about.

 

Mark Cavendish who had a very quiet tour in the first couple of weeks (by his standards) looked to be on course for the olympic road race, he was clearly the fastest sprinter in the last couple of days winning both Friday and Sunday’s stages, who would bet against him if next Sundays event comes to a bunch finish?

 

And despite being ravaged by injury and bad luck, Team Garmin-Sharp-Barracuda managed to keep the British flag flying and salvage some pride when David Millar won a stage.

Seven stage wins and the overall on GC for the British who would of thought that even 2 years ago?

Tour of Romandie, Its a Sky Thing

Wiggins won the first stage of the Tour of Romandie from a small group with an impressive sprint for the line. His Sky teammate and race leader after the prologue Geraint Thomas was dropped on the Haut de la Côte, along with the mornings 3rd placed rider, world champ Mark Cavendish (Sky). The race leadership passed to Wiggins, with Rogers (also Sky)  in second at seven seconds. Bauke Mollema (Rabobank) is now in third.