Sir Bradley Wiggins produced a dominant performance to win the Tour of Britain time trial and go top of the general classification.
The Team Sky rider clocked 19 minutes 54.20 seconds over stage three on a rain-lashed 16-kilometre course that started and ended in Knowsley Safari Park. It was enough to propel him into the gold jersey, 33 seconds ahead of fellow Briton Ian Stannard in the overall standings after his Team Sky colleague finished runner-up in 20mins 26sec.
Wiggins will now aim to defend his lead over the next five days of racing after enduring a difficult season, which included a failed bid at the Giro d'Italia. He is shaping up well now, though, for a tilt at the World Championships in Florence later this month.
"Admittedly it's not been a great season up to now," admitted the Olympic champion, "for one reason or another. But I've been training right through July and I couldn't tell you how many times I've gone round this course. It was nice to do a performance like that after the last two days. To win these races . . . I'm not a great climber so I had to get as much out of that time trial as possible. I had to take every second I could really."
Wiggins escaped lightly from a high-speed crash in the Lake District on Monday and was pleased with the way he attacked the course in treacherous conditions. "It was obviously [down to] commitment on the roundabouts," he said. "I wanted to take those roundabouts as fast as I could. Crashing yesterday, not flinching and getting back in there; it's not like me. I normally take my bat home."
Sir Dave Brailsford, Team Sky general manager, was impressed by Wiggins' application and believes the 33-year-old has positioned himself well for the remainder of the race. "That was pretty much ideal," he said. "It is always difficult when you have challenging conditions and miserable weather. But Brad has been concentrating well and he came to this race with serious intent. He has applied himself fantastically. It was a short time-trial here but the time was a good one.
"It bodes well for the next few days. There is a lot of hard work to do but we're in a good place and that's where we wanted to be. There's a lot of racing to come and we're not counting our chickens but Brad doesn't need to go on the attack now. He has a buffer and it is all about managing that."
New Zealander Jack Bauer was third in the time-trial, finishing 42 seconds short of Wiggins' mark and Mark Cavendish produced a creditable 21mins 20sec in one of his less favoured stages but there was slight disappointment for Movistar's Alex Dowsett. The three-time British time-trial champion beat Wiggins at the Giro d'Italia and came in with high hopes here, only to fall well short with a time of 20mins 50sec.
Overnight leader Gerald Ciolek of MTN Qhubeka fell off the pace after clocking 21min 45sec.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article