Inspired by the wall of noise that pushed him to a new world hour record of 54.526km in the Lee Valley velodrome on Sunday evening, Sir Bradley Wiggins is contemplating a return to the individual pursuit in London next spring for his final world championship appearance. Wiggins last won the event in Manchester in 2008 en route to Beijing and the second and third Olympic gold medals of his career.
The 2012 Tour de France winner’s dream is to end his career in Rio, at his fifth Olympics, with an eighth medal, and to that end he is likely to race the team pursuit in London, which will be the final marker on the road to next year’s Games. But the individual event, in which he won his first Olympic gold in 2004 – it was taken off the Olympic schedule after Beijing – is beginning to draw him.
“We’ve been talking about it. Because I’ve been doing a lot of track work for this it puts the four kilometres into perspective. We used to do six or eight laps but never four kilometres because it was such a long way to go. Having done an hour and spent a long time riding round the track we’re talking about coming back and doing the individual pursuit.
“I know it’s not an Olympic event any more, but it would be nice, 15 years on from winning my first world title in Stuttgart in 2001. The times haven’t moved on a great deal. Obviously I’ll do the team pursuit as well depending on the conditions, but I wouldn’t expect a world record, like in 2012. Those sort of rides only come round every four years, but certainly a gold medal will be what the team will be after.”
Wiggins is adamant that his hour is a one-off, which will make it all the more precious for the 6,000 fans who crammed the velodrome, many in the colours of his newly formed Team Wiggins squad. “I won’t go for it again. This is my end of season as I’m obviously not doing the Tour [de France]. I’ll start building up at the end of July for the track European championships in October, then the winter track programme until the Worlds in March. By the time I’ve had a little break and got back on the bike we’re just a year from the Olympics and training-wise it’s quite different for the team pursuit, 3min 50 odd. So it was now or never. I’m glad I got my name on the list.”
While conceding that his distance – putting over 1.5km on Alex Dowsett’s five-week old record – had “put the cat among the pigeons”, Wiggins said he hoped that Sunday evening would not see the record on the shelf for long, and that his fellow Briton and other top time-trial specialists such as Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland and Tony Martin of Germany would contemplate trying to go further in the near future.
“It’s been a bit of rush up to now for people to have a go at it. This is the first big marker. It’s raised the bar. Your obvious ones. Personally I’d love to see Fabian and Tony have a go at it. They don’t have the track pedigree to be confident enough. I wouldn’t discount Alex. I think he’ll have a look at that and consider his options. Like me he’ll go away and do his homework and if he thinks it’s possible he’ll have a go. To be honest, the age he is, 26, he’s probably got another eight years to have a go.”
Over the years, there has been a tendency for certain hour marks – Merckx’s 1972 49.431km, Moser’s 51.151 in 1984 and Chris Boardman’s 56.375km from 1996 to be regarded as so hard to reach that most contenders are deterred. Wiggins hopes this will not be the case with his record. “Fabian and Tony are probably running out of time, but for the record it would be nice if someone does attack it in the next 12 months or so, even if they fail. It will give kudos to this record. It’s been a great six months for the record and you have to thank Jens Voigt for that because he put himself up there at 42.”
There is some wriggle room in the Wiggins record, even if this marks a massive leap forward. Partly, it is about the bike. Following recent speculation about Alberto Contador receiving mechanical assistance, Wiggins’s machine was taken apart in front of UCI commissaires on Sunday night so that they could double check for a hidden motor. None was found but what sources close to the Wiggins team claim is that it is probably the most aerodynamic machine created to date, more than the UKSI machines which have been the mainstay of the GB track squad since Beijing and which are regarded as the gold standard.
Another is altitude, although Wiggins said yesterday that he hoped future hour contenders would settle for riding at sea-level to maintain a level playing field. The biggest and most intriguing variable, however, is the air pressure, with 20mb of pressure equating to 0.1sec per lap. With relatively normal air pressure of 1000 millibars, Wiggins believed he would have covered an extra 700m, while with rare - but not freak - low pressure of 980mb, he might have neared Boardman’s mark.
“We’ve seen the numbers from training at Manchester, we’ve had some 990 [mb] days and the difference is ridiculous, it knocks 20 watts off your power [for a set speed].” Those who look to succeed him would do well to pay close attention to long-term weather forecasts and tracking the deepest Atlantic depressions; it could be future hours are scheduled for autumn or winter, and there may well be a case for choosing the Chris Hoy velodrome in Glasgow.
