The noise was incredible! Bradley Wiggins says thank you to his fans

 
1/9
2 August 2012

They perched in trees and on lamp posts, on balconies and on roofs, waving their Union Jacks and grabbing any vantage point they could. In scenes more reminiscent of football than cycling, more than 300,000 people lined the route of the cycling time trial through the streets of south-west London and Surrey.

They had come to roar their support for Bradley Wiggins in his pursuit of gold and watch him write his name into the history books by becoming the most decorated British Olympian of all time. They drew long Wiggo-like sideburns on their faces and they chanted his name like they were at Wembley.

And boy, did the Londoner deliver. Going second last in a field of 37 riders, Wiggins blitzed the 44 km course in a sensational ride to stop the clock in 50 minutes, 39.54 seconds, a blistering 42 seconds ahead of Germany’s Tony Martin who took silver and over a minute ahead of fellow Brit Chris Froome who bagged bronze. It was Wiggins’s fourth gold and seventh Olympic medal, and it means that he is the first man to win the Tour de France and the Olympics in the same year.

For the spectators, it was the moment Team GB finally got their hands not on one but two golds — Helen Glover and Heather Stanning having obliged in the morning rowing at Eton Dorney. Crowds gathered under overcast skies all through the morning and by noon people were waiting six to 10 deep.

Ben Weston, 10, was too short to see, so he climbed a tree with a prime view of the start line, but found seven others up there already. His father Paul, 46, who had brought Ben and his brother Daniel, 16, with him on the train from Basingstoke, said: “My boys were up at the crack of dawn and have been champing at the bit to get here and cheer on Wiggo. We couldn’t get tickets for the Games proper so this is the closest we’ll get. The atmosphere is just electric.”

Alongside him was Anne Bayne, 71, a teacher, who had cycled from Richmond with her six grandchildren aged seven to 14, one of whom, Sam, was occupying the same tree as Ben. He brandished a “Go Wiggo & Froome” banner. At 2.15pm, the men’s individual time trial kicked off, each cyclist starting 90 seconds apart. They call the time trial the “race of truth” because there is no supportive team to pull you along in its slipstream – it’s just you and your bike, and nowhere to hide. By 3.06pm, with only the three top-seeded cyclists left to start — Tony Martin, Bradley Wiggins and Fabian Cancellara — the excitement was reaching fever pitch. Four students were among the crowd waiting at the first corner, their torsos bared and collectively spelling out the word “BRAD”. Ben Wilson, Ryan Witchell, George Brown and John Welsford, all 17-year-old friends from school, had come down from Bedfordshire because they wanted to see “Wiggins take gold”.

Martin got a rousing cheer as he whizzed by, but as Wiggins began to pull away, the crowds started going crazy. When Wiggins hit the finish line and his name shot onto the leader-board in first place, the crowd went mad. They cheered, they roared, they waved their flags — you would have thought we’d just won a war.

As the medal ceremony began, the clouds parted and the sun bathed Hampton Court Palace in sunlight. Wiggins got off the podium and paid tribute to his fans. “I really appreciate what the people did for me out there,” he said. “The noise, especially as I came through Kingston roundabout, was incredible. I don’t think I will ever experience anything like it in my sporting career again. Nothing will top that.”

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