Wiggins’ World. Party Time. Excellent.

A well earned glass of bubbly

So it is finally official and Bradley Wiggins is the first Brit to win the Tour de France. If he wasn’t the best man across the three weeks, then at worst he was maybe second to his teammate Chris Froome, although we’ll never know if Froome could have put enough time on Wiggins in the mountains to counter Wiggins in the time trial.

To me the real story of this year’s edition of Le Tour is the domination of the entire Sky Team rather than of their captain. They had not only the two best overall guys, but their domestiques were still chugging along when most teams were down to only their leaders, not to mention their ability to help Mark Cavendish win the stages he won. Even Wiggins took his turn in the lead out train to help Cav win his stages. Sky really were an all-star team and I can’t remember a performance like this.

Lance Armstrong was always blessed with amazing teammates, which maybe could rival this. But to watch as Sky climbed mountains with four or five men, doing the hard work as other teams sat behind just hanging on, it was quite staggering.

Question now is whether they can keep the band together for another go around. If they come back in 2013 with the same squad I can only see history repeating itself, however cycling teams rarely stay together too long. At some point Froome is going to not only want to be a team leader, but someone will pay him like one. If I had to predict, I’d say he sticks with Sky for now but by 2014 we might finally see Froome vs. Wiggins fighting for the yellow jersey. It’s also a delicate balance trying to have enough climbers to support the team leader whilst also trying to win sprint stages and support Cavendish.

Meanwhile there are rumours that Cadel Evans will drop out of the Olympics after he struggled in Le Tour. Whilst I’d love to see Cadel represent Australia, I don’t think anyone could blame him for pulling out and realistically, someone in better form coming in to replace him might be better for the team as well. I have to wonder whether Cadel simply had a bad tour or whether he is now simply declining and being past by younger, better riders. He has nothing left to prove and it wouldn’t surprise me if he is ready to hang it up. Then again he is the kind of guy who would read this (not that he will ever see it) and decide to prove everyone wrong, which frankly would be awesome.

But my favourite possible outcome would be for Cadel to realise that Tejay van Garderen is ready to lead and stick around another year to be the Froome to Tejay’s Wiggins. I think the only way to dethrone Sky now is to switch the Cadel/Tejay roles from this year and hope Tejay has the legs to get over the top.

For now, I don’t envy those boys. After three gruelling weeks they get a few days off and then have to compete at some little event called the Olympics. Oh man... the late nights just don’t end.