Some idiot in the press pack -- I'd love to have been sitting in there to see who -- felt it was a good time to ask Wiggins if he felt the race would be remembered not for his win, but for the absence of Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck, and the accusations of doping that seen Rémy Di Gregorio and Frank Schleck sent home.
Wiggins, still cooling down from his latest effort, put forth an impassioned defence that I hope should end the doubting and begin the well deserved praise.
"I feel strange. I don't know what to feel at the moment. You do something like that and then you sit somewhere like this and that fellow asks a question and straight away it's in a negative sense. So after everything I've done this year, it's like you still have to justify it. 'Oh yes, you've won the Tour, but it is going to be remembered for these people not being here?'
"I don't think all the people who came out from the UK to stand on these climbs in the past two weeks give a monkey's about that. For me, no one's actually praised me yet. No one's said, 'you've been there since the Tour of Algarve in February, winning races – you went to Paris-Nice, you've respected the history of every race you've been to, you've raced and trained and answered all the questions of the press all year.
"You've really taken it on. You came to this Tour as the favourite from Liège and I haven't dropped out of the first two of the GC for three weeks now. You've answered all these doping questions as articulately as you can.
"But it's all still in the negative sense. It's 'don't you reckon that it's just because Alberto's not here?' All year it's been, 'have you peaked too early?' And even now, no one's actually said, 'Bloody good on you, mate, well done.'
"I don't think Frank Schleck was in the race when he went positive," he said. "And I don't think Di Gregorio was ever going to do anything on GC."
And how can you argue with that? It has to be remembered, that Contador rode last years Tour while under investigation for the year before -- an investigation that eventually seen him banned from this years race -- and it has to be believed he was at least racing that one clean and as such looked every bit as human as the others, finishing 5th overall (later his result was removed) in a Tour Wiggins crashed out of having been a potential favourite. Andy Schleck had no form whatsoever this year and there's no reason to believe he was on the verge of finding it. Frank Schleck was never close despite appearing to be doped up. And who is Di Gregorio anyway?
