The peoples champion. Bradley Wiggins.
The pressure on Bradley Wiggins doubled on Saturday afternoon when the British team failed to deliver Mark Cavendish to Gold in the road-race, but you'd hardly have known it. As if it were scripted, as if just behind our camera's a director was sitting on a chair shouting 'lights, camera, action', Brad Wiggins ride in Wednesday's time-trial was never in doubt, and as he powered through Bushy Park, with the road lined either side, ten deep, by flag waving excitable British fans with the Olympic Games on their home turf and their finest cycling hero on his way to glory, it became the image of the games thus far. Wiggins crushed his opposition and with it took his forth Olympic gold, and seventh medal in total to make him the most decorated British Olympian ever.
It's been one hell of a year for Wiggo. The year of expectation and for once, he's a British athlete who has more than delivered. He won every build up race on the way to the Tour de France before becoming the first British man to win the biggest cycling race of them all. In a summer in which so much had been promised yet so little was being delivered what with the England team falling short at Euro 2012 and Andy Murray losing in the final at Wimbledon, here was a man, the everyday man like you and I, cleaning up in his sport.
Just six days after winning the Tour de France, when he might have been forgiven for carrying a little hangover, he was doing the lions share of riding at the front of the peloton, trying to control a race of 140 plus professionals with the hope of helping Cavendish win the road-race gold.
Four days after that, when he might have been forgiven for being exhausted and sick of the sight of a bike, he charged out of Bushy Park park, rounded several more corners and came home with a staggering time of 50:39.54 over a 44 kilometer course for a mind blowing average speed of 52.1 km/h and another Olympic Gold.
He then might have been forgiven for ducking into a team bus, getting changed and stepping outside only to collect his medal, but not this guy. Not the peoples champion. The first thing Wiggins did when he finished was to turn around and head back down the road into the crowd of fans who had cheered him on like never before. They swarmed him and he celebrated with them. The soldiers looking on who were there to provide security, could only applaud themselves with the odd one sneaking out his camera for a quick snap of the champion.
Never before had a cyclist been revered so much by an adoring public, certainly not in Britain and for someone who has watched the sport for over twenty years it looked all too surreal. But bloody fantastic at the same time.
Wiggins then retreated to the tranquil grounds of Hampton Court Palace were the race finished and took his place upon the throne in the gardens, a throne that only highlighted his command over the sport of road cycling in 2012."I cannot put into words how this feels," he said afterwards, draped in a Union Jack and with his gold medal hanging around his neck. "To get the Olympic gold in your home country is incredible. Around the start, and especially going into Kingston, it was just phenomenal, the roar of the crowd and the noise was amazing, I don’t think my sports career will ever top that.
"In the past few days I have won the Tour de France and now I have an Olympic gold medal. When I was up there on the podium, in this setting, with the castle thing, it is just so British. I just thought ‘we are not going to get any better than this".
And a word to his team-mate, Chris Froome, the man who was by his side all the way around France for the Tour, he came in third -- a fantastic third given the competition of Tony Martin (2nd) and a (surely) injured Fabian Cancellara (7th) around him -- giving Britain another bronze medal. A man who himself will one day win the Tour de France and even a Gold medal in a future Olympics, for now had to accept that he might be the least spoken about British medal winner of these games so far.
When the Winter Olympics were in Vancouver in 2010, the host nation had gotten off to a slow start, much like here in London with the British team. The medals were not coming as quickly as expected, at least not the ones of Gold colour, and people were beginning to get restless. Then a young 22-year old Moguls skier, Alexandre Bilodeau, bounced his way to first place and the nation erupted. The relief was there to see and like the champagne after the cork bursts free, the gold medals began to flow. Canada finished with 14 by the end of those games and topped the medal chart.
This today was Britain's Alex Bilodeau moment. No it wasn't the first for Britain of these games -- that went to Helen Glover and Heather Stanning in the woman's pairs rowing just a few hours before -- but it was the one that you sense will truly lift the spirits of the fans and the momentum of the other competing athletes.
Brad Wiggins has really kick started these London games for the British and you can expect the gold medals to flow ... the track cycling does start tomorrow after all.
"To do that in a home Games in London at the age of 32 - I know I am never going to top that, so I feel some melancholy too," he said. "I will look back in 10 or 15 years and think ‘that is the highlight, that is as good as it gets’. It was just brilliant."
All that stands in his way now is a Knighthood, but knowing Wiggins like we do, as that every day bloke on a bike and champion the people will adore, that sort of thing won't phase him much as he alluded to when asked about it in his press-conference:
"Sir Wiggo - it doesn’t quite sound right, does it? It is what it is and as much as it is an honour to receive something like that, I don’t think I would ever use it and I would just put in a drawer - I will always just be Brad".
A stamp unveiled by the Post Office to mark Bradley Wiggins's success
