The same way he always wins stage races. He rode steadily and conservatively on all the road stages and then smashed everyone to pieces in the time trial. Why break from a winning formula?
And to complete a picture of British cycling in microcosm, Mark Cavendish won the final stage. Cav winning the sprints, Wiggins winning overall – the Tour of Britain might never be so British again. The bidons probably had tea in them and if you think about it, a peloton is basically a big queue.
All in all, it was a very good race. It was tough enough that the general classification didn’t feature dozens of riders on exactly the same time, as it has done in previous years. I believe next year’s edition is set to be tougher still, which can only be good news.
The UCI Road World Championships
Omega Pharma-Quick Step won the team time trial by less than a second from Orica-GreenEdge. They had Tony Martin. That’ll have done the trick.
Oddly, the race as a whole wasn’t that close. Sky finished third, 20 seconds down and then BMC were fourth, over a minute down.
The individual time trial takes place on Wednesday. Bradley Wiggins is in good form, but so is Tony Martin and so is Fabian Cancellara. It’s a three-way grudge match without any actual grudges.
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