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 99th
Tour de France in Paris on Sunday. This win would be a great gift for Briton’s
before London Olympics begin which the 99th 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 99th 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.