Bradley Wiggins

I am not usually the type of person who allows internet forum hype to cloud my judgement but the sort of threads on sites such as Bike Radar and Veloriders surrounding the upcoming Team Sky has left me salivating (and not with Swine Flu) (Honest).

There has been a list of riders circulating the 'net which you will all have seen. Some of the stand out names on there are Damiano Cunego, Juan Antonio Flecha and Serge Pauwels.

These are heady days for those of us who have been around the sport of cycling for a while now. Not since the late 80's and the Ever Ready, Banana/Falcon rivalry has the sport in Britain been on such as high. And there are a list of reasons why now could be the time to cash in and establish road cycling as on of the top sports in the nation.

Here are the opportunities as I see them.

There's plenty of unsubstantiated rumours doing the rounds in the cycling world regarding the possibility of Alberto Contador signing a long term deal with the American Garmin-Slipstream team. After having dispatched some of the best riders in the world almost single-handedly this July in France, Contador is sure to leave Astana. Indeed, it's far from clear if there even will be an Astana team next season.

And so the dust can now settle on the 2009 Tour de France and the winners of each individual classification are now know.

There isn't too much funny stuff you can say about Alberto Contador. It was clear he was suffering on the Ventoux but Andy Schleck was too preoccupied with trying to get his brother above Kloden, Wiggins and Armstrong to notice.