Bradley Wiggins is a bit tired of pursuiting. (Image credit: John Pierce)
By Ben Atkins in Manchester
Bradley Wiggins has been unbeatable in the individual pursuit for the past few years, but the triple Olympic champion and current world champion may scale back his track racing programme to focus more on the road, he told Cyclingnews this weekend.
After taking the gold in Beijing, a repeat performance of his Olympic gold medal in the discipline in Athens, the Belgian-born Brit doesn't see the need to keep on racing the pursuit at the World Cup. He skipped the event in favour of the scratch race on Friday.
"There's just no need to do it really. I just don't feel that I need to get up at this stage of the year really, I'm qualified for the worlds if I want to ride it, which I haven't decided yet, but I probably am not going to bother with the pursuit for at least a year."
After a hectic post-Olympics, Wiggins is just looking to take some of the pressure that he's been under off for now. "It's been really good, it just always is after the Olympics, its such a massive hysteria in the country, you know. It's been really nice that that stage has been done for another four years," he said.
Instead, Wiggins wants to try to get some strong results on the road for his new squad, Garmin-Chipotle, before ramping back up to take his third consecutive Olympic gold in the pursuit in London in 2012.
Wiggins is looking forward to going after his first Tour de France stage victory in this year's team time trial in Montpellier. "I can't wait really; just talking to them [Garmin-Chipotle], it feels right. I've had my programme through and I'm really excited about it. The Tour has been announced and there's a team time trial, you know, we should have a real good shot at it. "
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He will have his fellow countryman David Millar on the same team for the first time, and is looking forward to it. "I've never really ridden in the same team as him, part of the reason for going there really is that I always hoped that one day we'd race together in the same team. It should be quite a good year."
After his strong track results, Wiggins was a big favourite for the prologue in London at the 2007 Tour de France, but he fell short of Fabian Cancellara's winning time. Since then, he hasn't had much luck winning Tour stages. "I didn't quite appreciate how much hard work it was going to take," he admitted.
