Tour de France 2012: Bradley Wiggins ready to be first Briton to win 99th Tour de France

Tour de France 2012: Bradley Wiggins ready to be first Briton to win 99th Tour de France

Wiggins will become the first Briton to win the 99^th Tour de France in Paris on Sunday. This win would be a great gift for Briton’s before London Olympics begin which the 99^th Tour de France. Only with his monumental achievements last year – he won the Tour’s green jersey and the World Championship – and his sporting X factor did the public finally recognise his talent by voting him the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. 

Wiggins has achieved massively on the track at Olympics and World Championships but, for most of his sporting life, he has also received precious little recognition. Vigorously avoiding complacency and dragging himself out of the comfort zone afforded by his medal-laden Olympic career has been a big part of Wiggins emergence as a road racer. However, if he can arrive in Paris in yellow on Sunday to lift 99^th Tour de France, people will be stopping him in the street for the rest of his life. With Tour de France triumph, he will get ready to glorify this year with fourth gold medal at Olympics.

Bradley Wiggins

Bradley Wiggins, who has put heart and soul and a lot more besides into trying to win the Tour de France. He is also becoming a big name in Spain apparently. A poster of five-time Tour champion Miguel Indurain, used to adorn the young Wiggins’ bedroom wall in Kilburn and on Tuesday Wiggins received Indurain’s personal neckerchief, which the legendary Basque uses when running the bulls in Pamplona. It had a good luck message written on it. Wiggins’s joy and pride was unconfined and will be scarcely matched if he wins on Sunday. 

Tour de France leader Bradley Wiggins has promised to support Chris Froome's attempts to win the famous race. He also maintains he would have no problem with taking a support role in future races and has also insisted he will stay with Team Sky until he retires. Wiggins also emphasizes that, in future Tours, he will ride in support of whoever is designated as the team leader. That includes team-mate Chris Froome, currently second overall, who has been so impressive over the past two and a half weeks. Wiggins leads Sky team-mate Froome, who is second, by two minutes and five seconds with five stages remaining. 

There has been speculation that Froome, 27, may feel he has to leave Sky to win the Tour but Wiggins insists he will aid his team-mate in the future. Froome echoed Wiggins’s words, making it quite clear that he would be happy to ride for Wiggins again next year if the centenary Tour was considered more suited to him.

Chris Froome keen to lead, Bradley Wiggins is called “Le Gentleman”

Team Sky duo Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome currently occupy the top two places in the overall Tour de France standings.  Chris Froome cleared the air that he will be riding to orders to help ensure that his team leader becomes the first British rider to win the Tour de France.

Although that sounds like the last word on the matter, it is entirely dependent on this week's events. Elsewhere in the interview Froome indicated the extent of his ambition and his desire to be treated as a potential Tour winner sooner rather than later. Team Sky's strategy this month, which has roots going back four years, is to maximise Wiggins's talents and minimise his weaknesses in order to put him on the top step of the podium in Paris next Sunday. 

Wiggins is currently 2min 5sec ahead of Froome, who sits just behind him in the general classification, and the Sky leader can expect to take a further two minutes out of his principal rivals – Cadel Evans and Vincenzo Nibali – in next Saturday's penultimate stage, a 53.5km time trial in which the final order will be determined before the ceremonial procession into Paris.

After finishing second in last year's Vuelta an Espana, a race he might have won but for Sky's tactical confusion, and attracting interest from other top teams, Froome signed a new – and very lucrative – four-year contract with the British outfit. For the moment Sky are perfectly placed with their leader and his first lieutenant at the top of the standings heading into the final week. 

Bradley Wiggins, Britain’s Tour de France leader, was christened “Le Gentleman” by the French media on Sunday after the race came under attack from saboteurs and Wiggins slowed the peloton in order to help a key rival. The yellow-jersey group, about 50 strong, had just crested the main climb of the day, the Mur de Pegure, when reigning champion Cadel Evans experienced the first of three rapid punctures as unidentified spectators scattered the road with tacks. This was an extraordinarily reckless action given that it took place just before a descent on which riders would reach almost 70mph. 

 

Wiggins, riding alongside one of his leading rivals, Vincenzo Nibali, immediately ordered the peloton to slow down, initially because he felt that Evans deserved a chance to regain contact, but also with the growing and scary realisation that other riders were similarly suffering punctures at an alarming rate. 

Then Wiggins himself suffered a mechanical failure and had to change bikes, and was quickly paced back to the bunch which slowed to a crawl before the organisers officially neutralised racing, allowing Evans and others to comfortably regain contact before the end of the stage. Those ahead in the break were allowed to race on, with Luis Leon Sanchez claiming the win. 

After the race, team directors reported that 30 of the key group had suffered punctures, or had arrived at the finish with tacks in their tyres. Four Tour cars and three motorbikes also either had punctures or tacks embedded in their wheels.