Wiggins on Evenepoel coming back from the injury:

“It remains to be seen. I think he’s come late to cycling for his age and seems to have hit the ground running. He seems to be the biggest talent in cycling at the moment, of his age anyway, aside from (Mathieu) Van der Poel. He would have been a real favourite for today the way he has been going. But it remains to be seen (if he can come back). A crash like that can be quite scary and leave some trauma with it, particularly for descending. For the next few years he might bottle the descent a little bit, you don’t know, every rider is different. But being young you probably tend to think less about the risk in bike racing. It’s probably as you get older and crashes of that nature probably set you back because you realise what’s important in life and perhaps don’t take as many risks in the future. But it will certainly shake him if he remembers anything about it.

“It is a descent that’s caused a lot of problems in the last few years, every race that you go into, because (Pedro) Horillo crashed in the Giro around that area, went 40 foot down and never raced again. On the exit of a corner of that nature they should perhaps have hay bales and things on that wall to at least limit the riders going over the wall. So there’s definitely again some safety issues, certainly the UCI can start looking into it a bit more for these riders.”

Wiggins on the Fabio Jakobsen crash:

“I spoke to Dylan Groenewegen in the week, I sent him a voice note just saying that I’d seen the UCI stuff during the week, that they’re a bunch of ***** basically. I just wanted to give him a big hug really, because I understand how hard it must be for him as well, and he sent me a message back saying thank you and how much it meant. Then his girlfriend messaged me about 10 minutes later and said thank you and to tell me he hadn’t had many messages of support like that and that he really needs them. I just felt the urge to send him a message after talking about it last week, because I hope he’s alright and I hope he’s got people around him, because he’s not really done anything wrong and all of the blame has been placed on him, talks of a life bans and things like that, he’s still a human being at the end of the day and I am sure he will be happy to hear that Jakobsen is back on his feet and it’s not as bad as we feared last week.” 

Wiggins on Vincenzo Nibali:

“Nibali is getting better every week though isn’t he? We spoke about him a few weeks ago and how it looked like age was catching up with him and he doesn’t look his usual self, but now I wouldn’t underestimate him for the Tour de France, I think he’s going to be there in that third week of the Tour somewhere. Last year I called Trek the Man United of cycling, they are always there and present but they always seem to cock it up and Nibali is their oldest rider, seen as their team leader but I dunno, they are a big budget team that never seem to get the results. Jumbo have got a lesser budget than them and look at the performances they put in, there is something not right with that team with how they are being run, how they are being managed, even when Richie Porte was there, they didn’t hit anything. They’ve been a real disappointment over the last few years, I can’t remember the last big win they had, since Cancellara really.”

 Wiggins on Max Schachmann hit by car in Il Lombardia:

“It’s happening in quite a lot of races now. The nature of that course is very up, down, twisty small roads and in Italy they tend to lack enough road marshals and stuff on every little road corner. Even if there is a barrier locals will sometimes tend to get angry and override the regulations and want to get out their house. They won’t want to stay in their house for six hours because the roads shut. And someone risked it after the front group had gone through and Schachmann was unfortunate to hit it really.”

 “It’s one of those thing too because it wasn’t serious how much will be done about it? A lot of the time it seems it has to be something serious happen for people to actually take not.”

Wiggins on Alaphilippe saying he ‘fancied’ winning the Tour:

“It’s a bit different to what he said a few weeks ago about not being in the form he wanted to be in. But we saw him in San-Remo last week and he’s clearly now brimming full of confidence towards the Tour next.”

Wiggins on if Alaphilippe win a Grand Tour?

“No. Unless he changed the way he rides because he rides on emotional energy and he leaves too much on the roads at the wrong times really. I don’t think we’ll ever see him have a Tour like he did last year. I may be wrong but there was an element of riding on cloud nine with that where I don’t think anyone expected him to be in that position including myself because we saw him on day two or three last year where he jumped away and won that stage and took yellow, who’d have thought three weeks after that. When you’re conscious that you’re capable of doing something like that, repeating it is quite hard again because maybe you overthink things. But I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

GCN’s Dan Lloyd on Remco Evenepoel horror crash:

“Again, and for the same team (as Fabio Jakobsen). His injuries could have been far, far worse that what we’re hearing that they are at the moment. So, thank goodness for that really, it was another heart in your mouth moment. We saw the repeat of the crash, the replays of the crash, probably a few too many times today, but I think he can count himself lucky really that he’s got out of it as he has done because as I say that could have been a lot, lot worse.”