airstream said:
The thing is everyone has its vision of cycling beauty and the thing they mostly remember. Attack is the most wide-spread but not the only one. There a lot of very successful riders who have minimum to proud of in terms of spectacle, but this doesn't belittle their merits because the result is always primary. IMO you equate concepts 'legend' and 'fans' preferences', but fans' preferences are very different.
Wiggins became a legend not because he just won the Tour. The man showed himself up in 2 polar cycling spheres [olympic champion at velotrack and gt contender] in an outstanding way. He is absolutely unprecedented in this.
And yet, to demand mountain attacks from a 192 cm ex track master is a bit sacrilegiously IMO.
Fair enough, I'll agree with you on fans preference, people do have different preferences to which riders are legends and what makes them a legends. Of course some of the sports biggest past stars, the ones that everybody agrees are legends of the sport. Guys like Merckx, Hinault, Pantani, are agreed to be legends mostly because of the way the rode (not that their palmares don't also play a role in it).
Regarding Wiggins and track, I was mostly just considering his road performance, but if we were to consider his track performance then I agree his status goes up. Not to legend status IMO, but it goes up above his status if we just looked at his road performance.
I also don't think it would take too much for him to attack now and then, if he can climb like he did in the 2012 Tour and do "sprints" like the one he did in Romandie then I think he could attack.