Sir Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish win world Madison gold
By Matt Westby
Last Updated: 07/03/16 6:41am
Sir Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish overcame a late crash to win gold in the Madison at the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in London on Sunday.
Cavendish fell with 11 of the race's 200 laps to go but team-mate Wiggins was able to keep on riding and by then they had already built an unassailable advantage over the rest of the field.
Their points total of 21 was enough beat France into second place by seven points and Spain into third by nine points.
The victory was a repeat of their win in the same event at the 2008 World Championships in Manchester.
Wiggins now has seven track world titles on the track spanning 14 years, while Cavendish now has three on the track, all in the Madison.
Wiggins said: "It's my last race on this track. We knew we would have the legs later in the race. We kept biding our time. We didn't come here to finish fourth and, fortunately, we gained enough points early on.
"I rode this event for the first time in 1998. This was the last and what better way to do it?"
Cavendish added: "It's our second world championship together. I'm so happy. It's one of the last times we will ride together in the UK. It's incredible.
"It was just about staying up there and being safe. Obviously, we weren't [after the crash], but the crowd kept us going."
Wiggins and Cavendish were caught out in the early stages of the race when Colombia, Switzerland and France all gained a lap and took control, but they responded calmly by building the biggest points total in the field by winning the third, fourth and fifth of the race's 10 sprints.
They still needed to lap the rest of the field take the overall lead and duly did so in the final third of the race with the help of Spanish duo Sebastian Mora and Albert Torres.
Cavendish's crash was not a disaster given that Wiggins kept riding, but the 35-year-old admitted staying with the peloton while waiting for Cavendish to rejoin the race had left him "foaming at the mouth".
Wiggins added: "We had this plan: rack up points if we could, but don't go crazy because it's always won on laps. So we picked up quite a few points, and then we tried a few attacks but people kept following us.
"But then we got the gap, and that was it. We said at the start, if we could get a lap with the Spanish, we couldn't go far wrong. We needed their help to get the lap."
The gold medal ensured Britain ended the World Championships top of the medals table with five golds, one silver and three bronzes.
