You can hardly blame Sir Bradley Wiggins and his heroic cycling team for celebrating wildly after claiming a historic gold last night in Rio.
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Great Britain have won men’s team pursuit gold – giving Sir Bradley Wiggins a fifth Olympic gold and a British record eighth medal in all. Five is a nice number.
“Chris has got six, so I haven’t surpassed Chris”.
The 31-year-old Yorkshireman had surgery last December after sustaining a back problem picking up his training bag at the Manchester Velodrome. ‘I don’t see what evidence they can have, other than someone coming in and saying “he said this to me, he said that”. ‘I spoke to him before the final yesterday, ‘ he said.
“To have five of your own is just brilliant”.
The British team, which included Ed Clancy, Steven Burke and Owain Dowell alongside Wiggins, beat Australia in the final in a world record time of 3 minutes 50.265 seconds.
Wiggins has now won medals in every Olympics dating to the 2000 Sydney Games.
Clancy returned for the Track World Championships in March at less than full throttle but still powered through to a third Olympic gold following wins in the same event at Beijing 2008 and London 2012. “This is the best team we’ve ever had”.
“We are here and we have done it and it is just this four guys here”.
“We needed Brad to turn this whole programme around”. He encouraged me to come back and I probably wouldn’t have come back, had it been somebody else in charge 18 months ago’.
“I was thinking about how incredible it was for me in my first Olympics, and to be five Olympics on, to have five golds myself, I could never imagine that for one minute. If anybody said they don’t look up to him, they’d be lying”.
A late surge saw the women just snatch silver from Romania in the exciting final moment.
They led from the front in terms of qualification for the final and, in fact, were rapidly closing in on the New Zealand team before Wiggins swung off after a big turn.
Wiggins stuck his tongue out on the podium – directed at children Ben and Bella – after greeting wife Cath and later paid tribute to his team-mates. I didn’t want to have to listen to the TV commentary of Garry Herbert and Cracknell.
“Then you’ve got Owain Doull, nothing fazes him”.
“Two years ago we got annihilated at the Commonwealth Games”.
“I knew it would take a world record to win and it did”.
Wiggins was born in Ghent and believes it will be a fitting conclusion. “This medal is not just for the two of us, because there are many people behind us who have worked very hard” – Gong illustrates the importance of China’s first track cycling gold medal.
Two medals in the rowing rounded off a wonderful day on the water for Team GB with Helen Glover and Heather Stanning successfully defending their Olympic title in the women’s pair race. “It comes down to that, I think”, Bobridge said. It’s something to tell the kids about when they are older.
“I’m riding the Tour of Britain in two weeks’ time”.
“I don’t want to dismiss the claims”.
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And, although he is retiring, Wiggins will always ride his bike.
