Sir Bradley Wiggins breaks media silence at Ghent Six Day
By Matt Westby
Last Updated: 20/11/16 5:43pm
Sir Bradley Wiggins said nothing was going to spoil his farewell from cycling when he broke his media silence at the start of the final race of his career on Tuesday night.
Wiggins will retire from the sport after partnering Mark Cavendish at the Ghent Six Day in Belgium, which ends on Sunday.
It is only the second time he has raced since it emerged he had taken the banned steroid triamcinolone under therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) ahead of the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France and 2013 Giro d'Italia.
Cav: Ghent track is a wall
Mark Cavendish has described the Ghent Six Day track as a 'wall of death'
The revelation was followed by the launching of a UK Anti-Doping investigation into "allegations of wrongdoing" in cycling.
Apart from one television interview, Wiggins had refused to speak to the media since the furore began, but he agreed to answer questions from reporters in Ghent.
He said: "I have trained hard for this, I have trained well for this and I have just been looking forward to it. Nothing was going to p*** on my parade."
Wiggins and Cavendish are looking to claim their first victory together in the Ghent Six Day, which pits teams of two against each other over six nights of racing, with the winners being the pair who complete the most laps.
They got off to the perfect start by winning Tuesday's Madison.
Wiggins added: "With Mark, it's special, but he has had such a long season I don't know how he is still going. It's impressive.
"It would be lovely [to win], but it's going to be so hard this week, it really is. Just to be here is enough.
"It puts a marker down. Mark was a bit tight there, but we just managed to pull it off. It was hard in those last 10 minutes."
