New Team Wiggins cycling team aims for Rio
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Loading... - J. Oliveira
- 15 Jul 2020
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Andy Tennant speaks for all seven Team Wiggins riders who have joined their race captain for the first time at the inaugural Tour de Yorkshire, which continues today with stage two, from Selby to York.
“We’re only here because of how successful Brad has been,” says Tennant.
Sir Bradley Wiggins and Sky transformed cycling in Britain and beyond in their five years together. In 2012 Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour de France and the nation has got on its bike in unprecedented numbers since Team Sky was formed in 2010.
Wiggins left the Team Sky fold in April but he and Sky joined forces to bring about Team Wiggins, a new outfit, endorsed by British Cycling, that was formed in January and registered on the UCI Continental tour, the third tier of professional cycling.
For Wiggins, the new team is designed to help him and his specially selected colleagues prepare for the Olympic track team pursuit in Rio next year. For Sky, it’s a natural progression in its cycling journey, to help up-and-coming British riders and inspire even more people on to their bikes.
Wiggins is leading his eight-man team in the three-day Tour de Yorkshire that is bringing the county’s cycling fans out in droves, just as last year’s Tour de France Grand Départ did.
Back in the saddle: Sir Bradley Wiggins joins
his team in Yorkshire
Wiggins, who has won three Olympic gold medals on the track and the road time-trial in 2012, now wants to concentrate on what he hopes will be a golden climax to his career in Rio next year. To that end, he and Sky have put together a team of bright British track talents, including Tennant, a member of Britain’s world championship-winning team pursuit quartet in Melbourne in 2012.
Like Wiggins, Tennant is desperate to make Britain’s four-man team in Rio. “With this team everything is streamlined to give us the best preparation,” he says.
“We’ve got a lot of things now that they didn’t have before. We realise how lucky we are.”
Wiggins, 34, is up against his old Team Sky colleagues, whose squad is led by Yorkshireman Ben Swift, while Barnsley-born Ed Clancy, the two-time Olympic team pursuit champion who is chasing a Rio berth himself, rides for his JLT Condor team.
The German sprinter Marcel Kittel, who won the opening stage of the Tour de France in Yorkshire last year, returns with the Giant-Alpecin team, and Thomas Voeckler, King of the Mountains in the 2012 Tour de France is riding, too, with Team Europcar.
Owain Doull, the young Welsh team pursuit race specialist recruited by Wiggins for his new team, is looking forward to the Tour de Yorkshire.
“This tour a big goal for the team,” says Doull. “It’s a proper debut for us really.
"We’ve raced in France but this is our first race riding with Brad and it’s one of the higher-profile events we are doing. It should be a really good three days.”
