Sir Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish set for Six Day London
By Matt Westby
Last Updated: 25/10/16 6:46pm
Sir Bradley Wiggins will begin his two-part farewell to cycling on Tuesday when he competes alongside Mark Cavendish on the opening night of the Six Day London.
Wiggins, 36, has already concluded his road career but will race twice more on the track over the next month before retiring.
Both events will be six-day races, the first in London from October 25-30 and the second in the Belgian city of Ghent from November 15-20.
Six-day races are contested in a festival atmosphere by teams of two across a range of disciplines, with the winners being the pair with the highest cumulative points total.
The event was born in Britain in the late-19th century but died off on these shores in 1980 and was only resurrected last year, when the Madison Sports Group held the new Six Day London for the first time.
While six-day racing suffered a slump in Britain, it has always thrived in Belgium, in particular, and the most famous event is the Six Days of Ghent, held at the raucous and iconic Kuipke velodrome.
The stadium and event are steeped in cycling history, with some of the sport's greatest names having raced and won there, and it is where Ghent-born Wiggins wants to compete for the final time.
However, his farewell is unlikely to be as romantic as he would have hoped given the controversy currently surrounding his use of the allergy drug triamcinolone under therapeutic use exemptions ahead of the 2011 and 2012 Tours de France and the 2013 Giro d'Italia.
There are also still unanswered questions over a medical package delivered to Team Sky in June 2011, but it is understood that Wiggins will not talk to the media during the London event.
Cavendish is likely to be less guarded. The 31-year-old Manxman won the world Madison title with Wiggins earlier this year and will partner him in both London and Ghent.
He finished runner-up alongside Belgium's Iljo Keisse at the 2014 Six Days of Ghent and is keen to go one better this year.
Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Tour, where he was racing last week, Cavendish said: "It's going to be hard. Ghent is known as crazy-hard. The demands on riders is a lot. Kuipke is a stadium that is steeped in history and a lot of great riders have ridden there.
"To be riding this year with Brad, as [Madison] world champions, is pretty special. It's back to [Eddy] Merckx and [Patrick] Sercu days.
"There are always a lot of British spectators there and I love to race in Belgium and it's always a good atmosphere. I got close with Iljo Keisse a couple of years ago and I would like to try and win it this year."
The Six Day London will this year be the first event of the Europe-wide Six Day Series. Subsequent events will be held in Amsterdam, Berlin and Copenhagen, before a grand final in Mallorca in the spring.
Six-day races are made up of the Madison, 500m time trial, team elimination race, 250m team time trial, longest lap, the derny race and the team 'win and out' race.
