Wiggins wins to extend lead

Bradley Wiggins enters his rest day with an advantage of one minute and 53 seconds
9 July 2012

Tour de France leader Bradley Wiggins has enhanced his advantage in the yellow jersey with a stunning victory on the road cycling event's individual time-trial at stage nine.

Wiggins (Team Sky) clocked 51 minutes 24 seconds to triumph on the 41.5-kilometre race against the clock from Arc-et-Senans to Besancon.

The triple Olympic champion, who on Saturday succeeded prologue winner Fabian Cancellara in the maillot jaune, began the day with a 10-second lead over defending champion Cadel Evans (BMC Racing) and enters Tuesday's rest day with an advantage of 1min 53secs.

Evans placed sixth on the day in 53:07, as Team Sky celebrated a one-two on the stage, with Chris Froome second in 51:59. Olympic time-trial champion Cancellara (RadioShack-Nissan) was third in 52:21. Froome, who won stage seven, climbed into third place overall, 2:07 behind his team-mate and 14 seconds behind Evans.

The time-trial, coming ahead of the rest day, could be significant in the race for the maillot jaune, with this year's Tour featuring more than 100km of racing against the clock before the finish in Paris on July 22. Wiggins is now firmly in pole position to be the first British Tour winner - and Froome could join him on the podium.

The day's events were also a useful marker for the 44km August 1 Olympic time-trial at Hampton Court, when Wiggins hopes to add to his haul of three Olympic gold medals. Wiggins and Froome are Britain's Olympic time-trial selections.

As race leader, Wiggins started last, three minutes behind nearest rival Evans, who he was seeking to beat to Besancon, the watch-making centre of France. At the first time check, after 16.5km, Wiggins led the field in 21:05 and was beating Evans by 1:02. Froome was five seconds behind his team-mate.

Wiggins again led through the second time check, at 31.5km, in 39:02, 16 seconds faster than Froome and 1:19 ahead of Evans. The 32-year-old maintained his scintillating pace in the final quarter of the race to triumph by 35 seconds from Froome, with Cancellara a further 22 seconds behind.

David Millar (Garmin-Sharp) was 36th in 55:38 and Steve Cummings (BMC Racing) 39th, nine seconds further adrift. Mark Cavendish (Team Sky), the world road race champion, was 6:27 behind in 1:00.07.

Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas-Cannondale), who began the day in third overall, 16 seconds behind, finished in 53:31 to place eight on the stage and fall to fourth place, 16 seconds behind Froome. Germany's Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), the world time-trial champion, clocked 53:40 to place 12th despite wearing a cast on his fractured wrist.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in