He'll always have Paris, but Roubaix was not to be. Bradley Wiggins has spent much of the past two years espousing his veneration for Paris-Roubaix, to the point of declaring that he would swap his 2012 Tour de France win for victory in the hallowed velodrome. "Just google 'Bradley's love for Paris-Roubaix,'" he had told a reporter with mock exasperation on Friday when asked to revisit the topic once again.
After placing 18th on Sunday afternoon, however, Wiggins ruled out the prospect of reneging on his departure from Team Sky and continuing at WorldTour level for one final tilt at the race next year. His brings the curtain down on his road career with no regrets. "Nah, I've won the Tour, haven't I?” he told a group of reporters who had assembled outside the team bus afterwards.
Eclipsed by Chris Froome in Sky's Grand Tour hierarchy, Wiggins found solace these past two seasons by tapping into his teenage affinity for Paris-Roubaix, placing ninth twelve months ago and then building his truncated final campaign with the team expressly around the race. "I'm pretty happy, I've had a good run at the whole thing and this was always like a new job the last couple of years – a bit of a hobby, a passion," he said.
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"But I've had plenty of opportunities. I rode this race 13 years ago and did it for a couple of years, so I'm not new to it. I had my opportunity back then but I think we've seen how cycling's changed with how many people were in the final."
As is his wont, Wiggins was placed towards the rear of the peloton on many of the early sectors of cobbles, and even at the Arenberg Forest, he was not as well-positioned as one might expect from a man with designs on winning the race. He was also caught on the back foot when Etixx-QuickStep briefly split the race in the crosswinds after the cobbles at Sars-et-Rosières with 75 kilometres remaining, but seemed to grow bolder as the afternoon progressed.
Finally, towards the end of pavé sector 7 at Templeuve, a shade over 32 kilometres from the finish, Wiggins launched an attack to show that at least some of the hype beforehand had been merited, as he soloed smoothly across to earlier attacker Stijn Vandenbergh (Etixx-QuickStep).
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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