:roflmao2::roflmao2::) !!!

Very good! That gave me a good laugh. Stiff upper lip and all that, eh chap!

Your right, you Brits are alittle more understated and less "effusive" than most. Good stuff, congrats to our British cousins!:thumb:

I thought it was even worse than that, that Wiggins snubbed him. It might not have been on purpose, and perhaps they hugged when the camera was not on them, but I doubt it. Wiggins seems to lack basic social graces.

How wonderful it must be to know what happened all the way from Toronto (not). They met in the finishing area and embraced with obvious mutual respect and admiration.

Nice to see the basic social graces of some of our North American cousins, especially with regard to the drugs question - obviously our country's governing body, being the people behind the actual organisation of Team Sky, are perfectly prepared to risk being kicked out of the UCI for aiding and abetting the use of illegal ergogenic aids in helping Wiggo to win both the Tour and Olympic gold. Must be all the experience they've had in winning multiple golds, silvers and bronzes at World and Olympic level thro' such reprehensible means.

We were glad to be spared Lesley Garrett's version of the national anthem, tho'.

All that, and I got to be one of the Torch carriers and the one I carried is going to be presented as an annual award at our club dinner next January - after the raffle tickets have been drawn, naturally.

Neh, neh, neh, neh neh.

Sorry, suffered a sudden attack of a lack of basic social graces for a moment. Words cannot express the depth of my remorse - even nanometre is far too coarse a unit of measurement

Wiggo is completely classless in comparison to Cancellara. The difference in their post race interviews was striking. Cancellara was a class act and Wiggins was ... well, just Wiggins. Personally, I like to root for guys with Cancellara's class. Wiggins is a disappointment from a fan's perspective.

they showed cancellara's arm after the tt, looks nasty and he's obviously in pain. I'm amazed he finished 7th...but he should be ok for the WC.
I like how they have them sitting on those thrones at the finish line- Hot Thrones instead of Hot seat lol.

Just after the race Martin was sitting on the ground catching his breath, Wiggins walked over to him gave him a hand up to his feet and they had a nice embrace and "well done sir". No need to hug any more than that or folks might have naughty ideas. :lol:

I didn't notice any coverage or interviews with Phinney, but I thought that 4th was awfully good in that bunch of super stars.

Wiggins has won every TT he has ridden this year (prologues don't count), so yes, he was lucky.........

Time will tell .... the young Chinese swimmer has also raised some eyebrows with her seemingly super human endurance. Is there a new PED and/or masking agent out there that not everyone is privy to yet. Have Wiggins and Froome been eating Chinese steak lately ? :)

I missed the memo about Cancellara, by the way............

If he hadn't fallen off in the Road Race, I'm assuming he would have been up there with Wiggins. Does that make them both dopers, or neither?

I think the inuendo, and that is all it is at this point, is that on only 10 days or so removed from the TDF podium both Wiggins and Froome showed little signs of fatigue and were able to distance the field in the Olympic TT. And Cancellara, a TT specialist, was surprsingly no match for either Wiggins or Froome at the first TDF time trial. Could be that they are just both simultaneously in super human form. And there is no doubting Wiggin's skills as a TT'er.

Watching that race on NBC made me miss Phil Liggett. In Phil's honor, Paul did mess up Tony Martin's name pretty badly, and I loved his comment that the order was chosen so that "the men who are good at time trials" go last. Still, I missed Phil.

The hostility to Wiggins on these boards is quite striking. I wonder if something is lost in translation across the Atlantic? Wiggins' deliberately understated, laconic and determinedly unimpressed style goes down very well over here. Disrespectful? We tend to see it as an avoidance of hubris, and a pretty grounded rejection of all the hype.

As for doping, I'm the last to be overconfident about who is clean and who isn't. But Wiggins has been one of the best-ever pursuiters on the track, the size of his engine can't be in doubt. He is no better now than Martin was at last year's worlds, or Cancellara the year before. I don't recall everyone saying they must be doping. And as for Froome, it's almost a year now since he beat both Wiggins and Cancellara in the TT at the Vuelta. These guys aren't doing anything that is markedly superior to what they have done before. I'll keep an open mind.

took me by surprise too, all the typical american over-confident exuberance and screaming "hell yeah" "woo woo" and all that crap seems to really grate on the europeans, i think we find it a bit distasteful, 'gloatish'. we like a bit more humility in our gestures. Honour and all that.

In '06, Wiggins expressed delight when riders, many of whom weren't implicated in the drug scandal, where not
allowed to ride the Tour based on speculation. He later expressed joy that 2008 Astana team would not be invited
to the Tour because Vino tested dirty in '07. Then he weaseled out of his contract with Garmin; and more recently,
he just insulted the French President. I find little to like about the guy.

That's at least an argument, though most posting here haven't been expressing disapproval on the basis that he is too vocally anti-doping. He didn't "weasel out" of his contract, Sky paid Garmin a fortune. And I must say I didn't notice anyone insulting the French President, though if he'd done that I'd have expected it to endear him to an American audience. LOL. Anyway, you're entitled to your opinion. I'm just interested in how many North Americans seem to react towards him much more negatively than the Europeans - and I don't just mean the Brits.

All BS aside, Wiggo is a beast this year. Guess we coulda and shoulda seen it coming. I really hope the guy is able to show the same form next year. Will make for a very interesting TDF in 2013. I can hear Andy now, "They shouldn't allow ITT's, this is the TDF not the olympics." I think a healthy Contador is the only one that can beat Team Sky. If Wiggo and Froome are healthy, Andy's whine will get him nothing but cheese.

Froome seemed stronger than Wiggo in the mountains. In the Tour Wiggo beat him on both TTs and yesterday's TT was about as flat as it's possible to be over 44km - only about 140 metres of climbing.

It would have been good if Cancellara had been on form but after Saturday's crash which looked very nasty (I saw it unfold about 50 feet from where I was watching and the TV replays) it's hardly surprising he wasn't on winning form.

And how many of the serious competitors hadn't just finished the TDF on the same day as Wiggo and Froome? Would such pundits be the same ones who were faulting Wiggo, Froome and Sky for not taking more risks and subsequently delivering what some considered a "boring" tour?

I am (obviously, as I'm a British cyclist) very pleased for Wiggo and I think he deserves a little more respect than some have shown him in relation to the doping accusations. On the other hand, it's not all that surprising when the margins he wins by are so comprehensive. As others have pointed out though, Martin wasn't on form after his crash at the Tour left him with a broken wrist bone and it was patently obvious that Cancellara was nowhere near his best after Saturday's crash (and probably some sleepless nights after becoming a father again a couple of weeks ago). I thought he was going to collapse when he got off the bike yesterday - I felt so sorry for him but if anything it made me respect him even more for coming seventh in spite of all that.

Bottom line, the drugs debate will rage on no matter what. FWIW, I believe both Wiggo and Froome to be absolutely clean but I can see why some people want to believe otherwise.

Anyone who seriously thinks Wiggins is doping should read this.

I read similar things by Lance Armstrong years ago, how he would never dope because of what he went through with cancer. Dopers are incredible liars. I don't suspect Wiggins of doping but it is not because he says so.

In '06, there was no clear evidence, that was made public, that anyone was guilty of doping, yet he immediately took the position that everyone accused was guilty and thought it was brilliant that they were no longer in the Tour (interesting and poetic that he would later cry and lash out, with composure of mentally immature adolescent, when he found himself the target of doping innuendos). The '08 Astana team had entirely new personnel from the previous year, yet he reveled in their exclusion from the Tour based on the actions of people who were no longer with the team. So, my contempt of him isn't due to his stance on doping, but rather it is his panache for rushing to judgment (something he later whine about when applied to him) and expressing joy at the exclusion of his peers long before any of them are shown to be guilty of any wrong-doing or for being charged with no worng-doing at all (Astana in '08).

And maybe you're right, weaseling out of his contract with Garmin isn't the most accurate description of what transpired. More accurately, Wiggins and Sky, with the threat of legal battles, strong-armed Garmin into releasing him from his contract. As for him insulting the French president on TV, I had just seen a snippet played on TV here (L.A., CA) during the broadcast of the Olympic TT where Wiggins referred to the French president -- now don't quote me -- as being dizzy or ditzy (I think). Wiggins was talking about his preference of being among his fans than in the company of the dizzy or ditzy French president. The comment didn't seem to go over well with the North American news anchor, nor did it seem to endear Wiggins to him; rather, it seemed as if the news anchor was shocked at the amount of disrespect displayed from such a public figure in such a public forum -- guess he's not an avid fan of cycling or of the Tour de France. Had he seen the Tour, he would have seen that Wiggins' uncouth mannerism was fairly commonplace. As far as the North American/European dichotomy: Nibali seemed far from enchanted with Wiggins; and the last time I checked, Nibali's passport was issued from some European country -- Italy, I believe. lol

I'm not sure why some people (North Americans included) express hostility towards Wiggins. I suppose they just get a sense that Wiggins is a bit of an ass or a hypocritical "c**t," even if they don't know precisely why they think that of him. And maybe they just don't feel like tapping away at their keyboards to explain to Wiggins' fans what is so clearly obvious to them. But there you have it: my explanation of my hostility towards Wiggins.

Honour and comments about the "dippy president of France." The more I hear Wiggins talk, the more I like him.

It's "woo hoo" BTW.

...talented rider,but seems to be a bit of an ass and lacks class IMO. Twitering "I'm blind drunk and overwhelmed... etc." Is how a champion represents himself in front of the world? I have no problem with any athlete or champion going out and celebrating... just don't act like a dumb teenager on twitter! Sheesh.

But he is like a dumb teenager, and so are a lot more 20-30-somethings in this world than we'd like to acknowledge.

At least he's not putting on a fake face.