Wiggins Takes Second Gold at Beijing Olympics

August 18, 2008

Bradley Wiggins has secured his second gold of the Beijing Olympics in the team pursuit event, with Great Britain seeing off Denmark and New Zealand.

The remarkable acheivement for Wiggins - who rides for Team Columbia when not in GB colours - came just 48 hours after taking his second straight gold in the individual pursuit.

In the process of adding a gold to their silver medal in Athens 2004 and bronze in Sydney 2000 in the same event, Wiggins and his three GB team-mate also smashed the World and Olympic records - which they had previously broken just the day before.

"I hadn’t felt so good on Sunday, but riding tonight in this race was a different story.” Wiggins said afterwards.

"Getting gold was the main objective, in any case, we weren’t thinking about the World Record at all. What we wanted was to win.”

But an Olympic and World Record nonetheless is now in the history books, along with Great Britain’s first ever team pursuit gold.

"The Danes have ridden well here, so we couldn’t be sure what they had left in them to give. We had to go all out.” WIggins explained.

"We’d been doing well, we’re on top of our game, but to get gold was really what mattered.”

Gold medal number three for Wiggins could arrive on Tuesday evening when Wiggins rides the Madison event in a two-man team with fellow-Briton Mark Cavendish - recently a four times Tour de France stage winner with Team Columbia.

"We’re both feeling really good about this, I know Mark’s feeling keen and wants to get racing.” WIggins added.

"I’ll have to see how it all goes, Madison racing is never predictable, you could be the strongest and stil crash, but me and Mark are already World Champions, that must count for something.”

"In any case a medal won’t do now, it has to be gold.

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Wiggins Takes Second Gold at Beijing Olympics