Bradley Wiggins Wins June 10th, 2012
Team Sky Procycling Chatel
Bradley Wiggins claimed his third major road cycling title of the year with a yellow jersey winning finish in Chatel today.
A great day for Bradley and fellow team mate and Brit Christopher Froome who finished fourth, plus the Sky Procycling team who won the team category.
The weather even played along with the rain holding off until after the event was finished and the clean-up was almost complete.
Most of the competitors will now be keeping their heads down for the rest of the month to ensure they are in peak condition for the start of the Tour de France next month.
Despite Bradley claiming in the post race interview he would not be THE favourite to win Le Tour he is certainly one of the favourites, and will have lots of a Brits looking forward to the big race next month.
The Criterium du Dauphine will be arriving in Chatel next weekend for the 8th and final stage.
This is one of Europe’s big annual road cycling races, and many of the Tour de France teams use it as a warm-up for the big event. Being in a mountainous area the race is usually won by a climbing specialist, and often features several of the most famous climbing stage from Le Tour.
This year the Dauphine is made up of a 1 short prologue stage around the town of Grenoble followed by 7 full stages, and covers a total distance of 1,052 kilometres. Starting Sunday 3rd June in Grenoble and finishing on Sunday 10th June in Chatel.
There are 22 teams and 175 riders running this year, with some big names including Brady Wiggins, Cadel Evans & Andy Schleck to name a few. Obviously I’ll be cheering on team Sky and Brady Wiggins (one of only 3 riders from GB), hopefully he should be in the running for winning the race.
Hopefully the weather will be fine, last year in April Chatel hosted a stage from the Tour de Romandie and after 3 weeks of glorious weather it rained all day when the tour arrived. This year Brady Wiggins won the 2012 66th Tour de Romandie, hope that is a good sign for next weekend!