THE BRADLEY WIGGINS SHOW: I CAN'T REMEMBER A TOUR LIKE THIS

Wiggins on Stage 15 end and Thomas performance [03:22]:
“Julian Alaphilippe did his usual thing, he tried to go with the attacks from Pinot at the foot of the climb. G (Thomas) did his usual trick, Sean Kelly actually called it on the TV and once G got dropped that’s the end of his Tour de France, but amazingly G will just time trial from where he’s at to the summit. He will continue riding at the same pace as the others accelerate away. Now as the others accelerated away obviously Bernal went with those attacks and G said afterwards he was stuck between a rock and a hard place because he felt he had the legs to go and it seems strange that Ineos – where did the communication break down there? G was able to attack; I mean who is the leader at this stage? Sean said what we were probably was that lack of confidence after yesterday. Even G himself didn’t really know where he was at today.”

Wiggins on Thomas/Alaphilippe Tour hopes [04:50]:
“I think that’s really lined him up now, I think G’s in prime position to win this race. If he carries on riding like that... And if Alaphilippe carries on riding like that – he’s not going to win the tour. There’s just no way. He hasn’t got a team. We saw Enric Mas as well today get dropped, get dropped or sit up, we don’t quite know. I was watching the French coverage with Jacky Durand and Jacky was saying that they seemed to have some sort of meeting last night between La Favre and the DS’s, Alaphilippe and Mas. Mas is leaving the team at the end of the year, second in the Vuelta last year. Maybe he was told he wasn’t riding the Vuelta, maybe he was told he came into this race thinking he was the team leader for the GC, switched halfway though, now we’re going to go for Alalphilippe and there may have been some sort of protest from Mas because Viviani was still there riding while Mas was getting dropped – it seems odd.”

He’s (Alaphilippe) got no team and I can’t believe that we’re going to sit here and see someone win the Tour de France next week, not only the way he rides going as deep as he does every day, but literally with no team. I just can’t see it happening. Ineos’ big improvement today was having Wout Poels there. We saw the calming effect that had on G when Poels was there, he set the tempo, he set it for quite a long way up the climb and I think G’s used to that and that was a big plus today for Ineos.”

Wiggins on Thomas as favourite [07:42]:
“There’ll be lots of talks tonight. I’m sure Dave (Brailsford) and the team will put their heads together. They’ll come up with a stronger plan next week now. I think they’ve seen the G they wanted to see today after yesterday. Bernal is a gentleman as well, he’ll be under team instruction next week and I’m sure there will be a firmer, more fixed plan for Geraint next week now they’ve got that confidence. They’ve got a week to go, Geraint is prime position now to win this race and if he keeps riding the way he does, keeping that composure, keeping that cool, he’s limited his losses to perfection this weekend. And although he lost time to Alaphilippe yesterday and gained time on him today he’s the one who looks like, off the bike as well as on it as well, the one who’s got the strongest team and is going to go on to win this race.”

Wiggins on Thibaut Pinot/Simon Yates [9:20]:
“My fear for him, as we’ve seen in the past at the Giro and that, is how much he can go that deep really. That has a big impact on riders. Today was huge for him going as deep as he did. We saw Nibali do that in the Giro and lost time towards the end. We saw Simon Yates doing it last year. Those big attacks; riders tend to pay for those. So, my fear is him is that he has to continue doing that in order to gain time back on those guys. I think Pinot now must just recover, sit tight and almost wait for the others to get dropped and bide his time. We had a good chat with Matt White a couple of days ago and they were really looking at those stages in the Alps for Simon Yates. I don’t think they ever expected to come away with two stage wins before we got to that point. So, more to gain from Michelton-Scott really in terms of Simon Yates – he could come out from this with four stage wins.”

Wiggins on Simon Yates [10:40]:
“It was 32, 33 riders in that break this morning and Simon bided his time all day, went with the attacks when he had to, what an incredibly amazing mature performance from someone who’s still relatively so young in the sport.”

Wiggins on Bernal [11:23]:
“We’ve almost all forgotten how young he is. I know he’s had such a great season, winning Paris-Nice, winner of Tour of Suisse. I bigged him up as a potential winner this year at the start of the race. Maybe it’s too much too soon really, we’re expecting too much from him that added towards Geraint’s cracking slightly yesterday that Bernal almost thought he could be in a position to win the Tour today.”

Wiggins on Tour as a whole [14:36]:
“I can’t remember a Tour like this, as open as this or as entertaining as this. I described yesterday like a junior race, almost like a Tour de L’Avenir.”

Wiggins on Geraint Thomas honesty and a comparison with Lance Armstrong:
“People ask so much of these riders in terms of honesty. People want honesty and they get honesty and they’re still not happy. Geraint says what’s on his mind at that moment. He speaks the truth. He’s very honest, as he was today at the finish. And that is how he felt at that moment in time, he’s being completely honest with his team. Maybe someone like Lance Armstrong wouldn’t have done that, he’d maybe have hidden it for their spectators. But Geraint’s a different breed of animal and I think that won’t affect the way he races the next day. All it will do, you can look at it both ways, and think ‘well why give so much away to your rivals’ but the worst thing his rivals could do is underestimate G in this Tour de France and actually we saw today maybe G came back from yesterday you could say. So I think G will say it as it is at that moment how he feels and he won’t hold back.”

On riders showing weakness during the Tour de France [19:10]
"We've become accustomed to watching the likes of Simon Yates being honest in the press, at the Giro, he would say that he didn't have it on the day, it's actually quite refreshing, because what they do is they come out the next day, or a couple of days later and have a stormer of a day. This is what happens to cyclists, most people that watch the Tour have bikes now, they know what it's like to suffer, have a bad day, not everyone can have a good day all the time. It's a good thing to be honest, I have known Geraint a long time now and he's always been like that, it's no reflection on how he will approach or race the next day. All the riders know that you can have a bad day and a good day, it's swings and roundabouts really. Look at Alaphilippe today, when he cracked, he really cracked. Earlier in the stage, he went with Pinot, they dropped G, who'd have thought at that point he would've lost time to G, but it turned on a knife edge and all of a sudden Alaphilippe is riding on the front of the group that had Wout Poels and G, then he's dropped by them."

On George Bennett defending Geraint Thomas on Twitter [21:26]
"He's great George, he's superb. It's a shame more riders aren't like him because he says it how it is and he's absolutely right what he says. It's unfortunate, there is the argument that we are too soft in cycling and people have the right to have allegiance, be tribal towards who they support, if you're French, you want Alaphilippe or Pinot to win, this is a French race, they can get very patriotic during the race, they do not like the dominance of other teams. We've seen it during previous races with Chris Froome, someone tried to push him on Alpe d'Huez last year, he had urine disgustingly thrown over him a couple of years ago, they don't like it.

I don't want to categorise French people saying it's them doing it, because it's not always the case. It's not all French people by any means, we have met some lovely people along this journey, people who support the race, people who support Thomas, but being supportive and being tribal is a good thing, but when that starts to disrupt, starts to impact a rider who at the end of the day, is only trying to do their job, that's when it becomes out of order really, because Geraint is only doing his best there, he's trying his hardest climbing up the climb and he doesn't deserved to be abused. Obviously it happens in football when players are taking corners and stuff but they have a physical barrier and stewards, the riders don't have that and there is nothing to stop one idiot crossing the line and becoming violent."

On what it's like to have fans so close to the action during the race [23:40]
"There is particular footage on Youtube of me pushing someone out of the way when he was running next to me, it was too much in that moment, I am there in the job that I have trained all year for, 3km from the summit, trying to get back on to a group that contained Schleck, Contador and Armstrong, it was just not welcome at that moment. Perhaps it was unfair for me to lash out and push the guy in a ditch, but you don't want any distractions at that point. You can cheer, boo but the moment it starts impacting on what you are trying to do, nobody would expect to be in their working environment and have someone come at them, in the proximity they do and expect not to have a reaction. Look what happened in the Villa game this year, fan running on the pitch and going for Jack Grealish, he got imprisoned and rightly so. We wouldn't have the sport without those people on those climbs, that's what makes it special, what makes it such a great spectacle, and the riders, we wouldn't have a sport without them, but the fans have to recognise at those moments in time, when they've had a few drinks, that they are at their workplace."