Cyclist Bradley Wiggins. Photo credit: Petit Brun http://flic.kr/p/cwR4k7
The background
Bradley Wiggins has become the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France, the supreme race in the sport. Wiggins triumphed in the 99th edition of the gruelling 4,000 kilometre, three-week long race on 22 July in Paris, France. 56 editions of the race have included a British rider but never before has a Brit even managed a top-three podium finish.
The cyclist’s triumph prompted messages of congratulations from Prime Minister David Cameron and the Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband, as well as sportsmen and women who will compete alongside him at the London Olympics. Wiggins has won three Olympic Gold medals in the velodrome.
Quoted in The Times (£), Cameron said that Wiggins’s win was the “perfect backdrop” to the London 2012 Olympic Games. “Bradley Wiggins has scaled one of the great heights of British sporting achievement, to be the first person in 109 years to win the Tour de France is an immense feat of physical and mental ability and aptitude.”
Best. Ever
“Bradley is simply our best … EVER,” argued Martin Samuel at The Daily Mail. Samuel acknowledged that ‘ever’ “certainly is a big word. Just the two syllables but huge in sport. Hugely misused, too … Yet when Bradley Wiggins made his way up the Champs-Elysees, each pumping limb its own little revolution, ever has never sounded more appropriate.” Samuel instead that “the greatest British cyclist. Ever. Bradley Wiggins may well be the finest British sportsman. Ever.” Samuel praised Wiggins’ single-mindedness and self-sacrifice and conluded that “taking it all into consideration, this is one of the greatest achievements in British sport, if not its summit. Its uniqueness, the making of history, the sheer physicality of the challenge, the decency of the champion, puts Wiggins up there.”
Matt Seaton of The Guardian noted that “a Tour winner has to be the perfect all-rounder: able to hang with the specialist climbers at 2,000m over the Col du Tourmalet, yet powerful enough to survive the cobbles of the French-Belgian borders and crosswinds of Les Landes.”
Wiggins joins the pantheon of greats
Wiggins’ achievement “is more than merely historic; it is monumental,” argued Matt Seaton at The Guardian. Seaton reminded that, previous to Wiggins overall win, a number of Britons have worn the leader’s yellow jersey for a day or a handful of stages – Sean Yates, Chris Boardman, David Millar and Tommy Simpson – “but none came close to winning the blue riband event” of world cycling. “By winning outright the 2012 Tour de France, Wiggins joins a pantheon of greats” of cycling including Louison Bobet, Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault said Seaton, who insisted that, “for a Briton to win the Tour is as seismic, in its way, as it was for the first American to do so, in 1986. Like the US, Britain has been until now an outsider in the ‘world’ of professional cycling – and Bradley Wiggins is our Greg LeMond.”
Not the greatest but one of the greats
James Lawton of The Independent said that Wiggins’ win means he now “takes rightful place with greats as no more or less than a first among equals.” Lawton hailed Wiggins’ performance but regretted that, “because it is the obsession of the age” so many are clamoring to judge whether he is the greatest of all British sportsmen: “No, he isn’t and he hasn’t and in a better ordered sports culture the question would not even be posed. It would be enough to say that the 32-year-old son of a pro racer, who has gone so far beyond all traditional expectations with his three gold medals and such serious possibilities in the Olympic road race, has joined the very highest company of his nation’s sportsmen and women.”
Who is the real Wiggo?
At The Telegraph, Brendan Gallagher, who collaborated with Wiggins on his two autobiographies, said the rider is “a man of extremes and excess but he fights hard to find the middle ground. He is a natural communicator who sometimes doesn’t answer his phone for months; a man who used to neck 15-20 pints of strong Belgian beer in one sitting and who now goes six months without touching a drop; a devoted family man who this year has hardly seen his wife Cath and their two children, Ben and Bella.” Gallagher said that Wiggins’ “default setting” is “anti-establishment, inner London Kilburn lad” and that “becoming ‘mainstream’ had been difficult and a little traumatic.”
