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Sir Bradley Wiggins adds Vuelta and Commonwealth Games to list of 2014 targets

Sir Sideburns wants Commonwealth gold, Vuelta as world championships launchpad

Sir Bradley Wiggins has said that he hopes to add a gold medal from the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow to his palmares this year, and to use Spain’s three-week grand tour, the Vuelta, as preparation for the world championships.

Speaking to Cyclingnews.com, Sir Bradley said: “I haven’t got a gold medal from the Commonwealths so it would be nice to add that on. It’s a couple of days after the Tour de France, so for the sake of carrying on for a few more days and doing it, I am down for it.”

But first he has to do the paperwork. “I’m glad you reminded me actually because I’ve got to fill a form in otherwise I can’t ride it,” he said.

Wiggins' first significant international success was at the Commonwealth Games when he was part of the England team that came second in the team pursuit at Kuala Lumpur in 1998.

In 2002, at the Manchester games, he was second in the individual pursuit behind Australian Bradley McGee, his team-mate at Francaise des Jeux, and he was part of the silver-medal team pursuit squad; Australia was again the gold medal team.

While July's Tour de France remains his main priority for this season, he admitted he hadn’t yet looked at the route for even the three British stages. “I’m so focused on what’s coming up I haven’t looked,” he said, adding that he usually starts thinking about the Tour in April or May, not at the beginning of the season. “I know it starts in Leeds,” he said.

Nevertheless, he made the fairly safe prediction that the Tour grand départ will be huge.

“We’ve had experience of what it’s going to be like with the Olympics, and it’s going to be massive in England,” he said. “They are going to be some of the hardest days of the race as well because of the amount of people that are going to be there.

“The first stage is going to be a bunch sprint as it was in Corsica [in 2013] and I think that adds extra pressure because there a lot of people that can take the jersey. It’s going to be really challenging just to stay upright and out of trouble and to get into France having lost no time.”

After the Tour and the Vuelta, Wiggins has his sights on another title that has so far eluded him: the world time trial championship.

“I’d love to ride the Vuelta again, now that I’ve ticked the box of the Tour of Britain. I’d love to use it as preparation for the World Championships as Fabian [Cancellara] and Tony [Martin] tend to do every year and really try to have a good crack at the worlds in Spain this year.”

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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18 comments

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Beefy | 10 years ago
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Can't argue with that, IoM rock!! Rockn Rocket

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Beefy | 10 years ago
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Can't argue with that, IoM rock!! Rockn Rocket

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mooleur | 10 years ago
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PFFFFT, bring it, the IoM are gonna kick yo' English asses!  3

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Sim1 replied to mooleur | 10 years ago
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Not in the mens (or womens) TT you won't  3 Whoever IOM enter for the TT wont come within a mile of the English or Aussie testers.

The mens road race, on the other hand...different story....

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Beefy | 10 years ago
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The thing with brad is he may have the right to a Belgian passport but he appears to see him self as a Brit living in Lancashire. Froome appears to see him self as African can has commented such in the past. I mean Froome could at least pay lip service to riding for Britain

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Leviathan | 10 years ago
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Are Belgium in the Commonwealth? Well a nice chocolate coin will do.

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allez neg | 10 years ago
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The TdF winning, multiple Olympic and World champion Bradley Wiggins? Whats he ever done? Fuckin' useless, isn't he?  1

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Beefy | 10 years ago
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How I would love wiggo to sign for a new team next year and beat Froome in Le Tour, not much chance of it happening but I can dream. Still the only Brit to win tour as Froome seems to think of himself as African.

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mtm_01 replied to Beefy | 10 years ago
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You know he's never going to be anywhere close to winning the Tour again?

He's already changed his body from GC contender to TT power destroyer for the Worlds last year.

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oozaveared replied to Beefy | 10 years ago
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Beefy wrote:

How I would love wiggo to sign for a new team next year and beat Froome in Le Tour, not much chance of it happening but I can dream. Still the only Brit to win tour as Froome seems to think of himself as African.

Don't think he could to be honest. I like Wiggo don't get me wrong but if I was betting my house it would be on Froome as the TdF winner over Wiggo. Froome is naturally (in pro cycling terms) his 68kg. Wiggo has to work really hard at getting to that sort of weight. Froome could break Brad in the mountains. Wiggo has the TT edge but not by all that much.

I have in my mind the incident in 2012 on La Toussiere. Wiggo had been protected and paced all the way up. But when Froome put the hammer down Wiggo broke immediately and quite spectacularly. Now imagine Froome actually trying to break Wiggo on a climb and without someone asking him what the hell he thought he was doing in his ear and making him slow down and wait for Wiggo. Imagine instead they were saying but Allez Chris! instead.

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Some Fella | 10 years ago
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Love to see him win the Vuelta - wash away the bad taste left by last year.

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Jimmy Ray Will | 10 years ago
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Personally I am worried that the number of goals put forward suggest that he has no real goals.

Fingers crossed he can prove me wrong.

I can't see how anyone can moan that Wiggins doesn't achieve anything... He's won the tour, has the GB's biggest individual haul of Olympic Gold medals, has won many of the worlds most prestigious stage races......etc. etc.

The guy has one understandably, and only really relatively, poor season and suddenly he's a self obsessed failure? Not sure I can buy in to that.

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DeanF316 | 10 years ago
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If only Bradley could actually can any results in races to get his almost
daily press release or video of verbal rubbish. He is just a self obessed pratt. How about keeping your gob shut for a while and actually getting some results in races Bradley.

Sits back and waits for the abusive replys from the Sky can do no wrong bridgage.

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Sim1 replied to DeanF316 | 10 years ago
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DeanF316 wrote:

If only Bradley could actually can any results in races to get his almost
daily press release or video of verbal rubbish. He is just a self obessed pratt. How about keeping your gob shut for a while and actually getting some results in races Bradley.

Sits back and waits for the abusive replys from the Sky can do no wrong bridgage.

Like the silver medal in the Worlds TT last Sep? That kind of thing?

All of these quotes from Wiggins are coming from the same set of interviews carried out in one afternoon just before the Challenge Mallorca races. The various websites are making all of his answers eke out over a number of articles so that they get more content - and so more hits. Thats the way it works.

BTW whats a 'bridgage'? Just a friendly tip: if you're going to write a ranting post, a quick spellcheck might be advisable before posting

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bikeandy61 | 10 years ago
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Seems to have his head back together again. At least on paper; fingers crossed that he achieves some of his targets.

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Al__S | 10 years ago
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I'm not able to watch the video on Cycling News- is he after the Road Race or Time Trial at the Commonwealth games?

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Sim1 replied to Al__S | 10 years ago
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TT

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mikefreer | 10 years ago
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Its good to see Brad back on track!! He seems to have a lot of big goals this season. Good Luck Wiggo  1

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