cineteq said:
I bet Sky would agree with you, but will Brad agree?
Maybe all you have to do is rewind to Vuelta 2011 and look for what he said, or didn't say.
Well, I'm not particularly a Wiggins fan, and he's pretty big here, so that tends to make me a bit anti-Wiggins, so I'm going to be a bit biased, but..
I think at the Vuelta, Wiggins was expected to place higher right the way until the final stages, hence the annoyance. After that 2nd place, I think Chris Froome becomes a marked man (all the worse for him). I think Bradley's not half as strong as he thinks he is - the 4th place TdF in '09 the 3rd place in the Vuelta and the culture of sport in Britain have gone to his head.
We have a weird tendency to build our sportspeople up, talk about their chances of winning, barely think about the idea that they might not, and when they inevitably do fail, act like we knew that'd happen all along. It's a weird masochistic cycle. Add to that the fact that among the general public here, cycling
is the Tour de France, and he's our first real contender in a generation, and he ends up believing his own hype.
He has a chance, no doubt. I think, though, that if he does win it, Froome being marked will be a big help at some point during his victory.