Yesterday (March 10) saw a decisive overall win for Team Sky’s Bradley Wiggins at Paris-Nice. Wiggins went into the eighth and final stage – Nice to Col d’Eze (individual time trial) – with a 6 second lead which he spectacularly managed to stretch to 8 seconds across the 9.6km route to be crowned king of the ‘Race to the Sun’, arguably the biggest win of his career to date. Vacansoleil-DCM’s Lieuwe Westra finished two seconds down on the ITT to take second on the stage and overall with Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) taking the third overall spot.
The 31-year-old becomes only the second Briton to win what is one of the biggest races on the cycling calendar outside of the three Grand Tours, emulating Tom Simpson who triumphed at Paris-Nice in way back in 1967. Team Sky’s Sports Director Sean Yates summed things up saying, ‘Everything’s gone our way except the rain on the prologue day. But Brad’s capped it off with a perfect scenario winning the stage and the GC and it’s quite a big day for the team.’
Wiggins himself commented, ‘I always said it was about me doing my ride, emptying it to the top which was always going to be horrible. It was a 19-minute effort and pacing wise we got it absolutely perfect. Then it just depended on what everyone else did and there was one guy in Westra who got very close but it’s job done.’ Adding in typically gracious style, ‘I’m pleased more for everyone else rather than myself after all the hard work the boys have put in this week. Ultimately it fell on my shoulders to finish the job off and I’m just made up that I was able to do that.’
