Cav & Wiggo - the last time?

It this the last time for Wiggins & Cavendish as team mates?

Luke Rowe, centre, followed by Bradley Wiggins

Wiggo, sideburns, scooters and yellow jerseys

Hardly had time to watch this year's Tour de France, let alone write about it as last year - for reasons too tedious to go into, but had to post a belated comment on Bradley Wiggins ride into history.

He may be efficient rather than flamboyant on the bike, he's certainly benefited from the no expense spared team Sky have built around him, but every other rider who laid down a challenge, got an answer from the Kilburn Mod.

But that's not the best of it.  Wiggins, you suspect to the frustration of the team Sky PR machine, is not media trained to within an inch of his life, to trot out bland platitudes.  Ask him a question and you'll get an answer.  As demonstrated by Wiggins f-word strewn response to yet another insinuation about just how it was possible to ride clean and achieve all Wiggins has this season.  For a slightly more reasoned variation on that, see Wiggins excellent tour blog from The Guardian here.

That's still not the best of it.  We know he collects scooters, loves real ale (although I suspect that's a strictly rationed indulgence at the moment) and may own a record or two by The Jam.  But better still than all that, was his reaction as he stood on top of the podium as the newly crowned winner of the Tour de France.

Mad, bad and dangerous to be in

 A review of week one (and a bit) of the Tour de France, up to the first rest day and it’s business as usual, only more so...

As if determined to hang on to the black skull and crossbones jersey as the sporting event that ‘goes up to eleven’, to slightly misquote Nigel Tuffnel, the Tour de France continues to cross the line between genius and madness like it’s the pedestrian crossing by my local newsagents.

Before it even started, you got a sense that all would not be well over the 3 weeks of sporting sadism that is Le Tour.  At a slightly surreal ‘introduction to the teams’ held in what appeared to an old Roman amphitheatre, defending champion* Alberto Contador was roundly booed.  Why?  Well it’s all in the asterisk.  After last year’s Tour it was revealed Contador had failed a dope test.  The Spanish cycling authorities accepted his claim that it was due to eating some contaminated meat and cleared him to race on.

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) weren’t so easily satisfied and wanted a new hearing before this year’s Tour.  Lawyers for Contador got the Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing postponed, so he’s free to take part this year, but nobody knows if he’s the defending champion or not!