It is possible to have too much of a good thing, according to Brad Wiggins. In 2012 he won the Tour de France and a gold medal at the London Olympics time trial but now seems to have some regrets due to way it affected his private life.
“There’s been times I wish I’d never done all that," he said in an interview with the Guardian before the start of the track events at the Commonwealth Games in Scotland. "I left for the Tour de France that year relatively unknown in the public’s eyes. When I came back, for a week or so I felt like the most famous man in the country.”
“It just went mad for a bit." “Looking back now you don’t fully appreciate it at the time, you just try to take it in your stride… and drinking and stuff to try to ease your way through it. It was massive really. I can’t really put it into words how much it changed everything."
Can you see Paris from the top of Hautacam?
Today's third stage in the Pyrenees and the finish at Hautacam marks the end of the mountains in this year's Tour de France and the start of the descent to Paris. Many riders will be relieved to make it to Hautacam, knowing that they should be able to make it to Paris and so finish this year's race.
Richie Porte summed up the feeling in the peloton before the start of the stage.
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"Can you see Paris from the top of Hautacam?" he tweeted.
In truth the riders still face 543km of racing before the finish in Paris, with the category four Cote de Monbazillac near the end of stage 19, the 54km time trial from Bergerac to Perigueux and the symbolic category four climb of Cote de Biis-sous-Forges early on the final 137.5km stage to the Champs Elysees.
Kittel at the end
The Giant-Shimano sprint train is all mixed up at the moment, as Marcel Kittel jokingly pointed out after Wednesday’s second stage in the Pyrenees.
“Well, the timing with my lead-out man Tom Veelers didn’t work out all today – he came to the finish before me! He was next-to-last and I was the last one on the stage. ;-) Oh well someone has to be last,” he wrote on his website.
“Since I knew that I had enough time, I let the grupetto go on without me and arrived a minute later.”
The grupetto rolled in at 27:46, Veelers at 28:55, and Kittel was dead last one second later, at 28:56.
No allée for Hinault
Bernard Hinault should have been honoured with a path in his name in central Pau before the start of the stage to Hautacam. However the event was recently cancelled despite the Pau council voting in favour of it.
According to local newspaper La Républic des Pyrénées, the naming of the path in Place Verdun was cancelled by the mayor François Bayrou.
"It's strange to name a street or a building after a living person," Bayrou explained. "The rule is simple: we name a street or a building after a person only when the person has died."
