Hoy leads praise of record-breaker Wiggins

Bradley Wiggins set a new British record of eight Olympic medals as he and team-mates Edward Clancy, Steven Burke and Owain Doull beat Australia in the final at the Rio velodrome.

He sat back from them at times as they talked to media in the Velodrome, let them get their fair share of glory, and the friendly, and relaxed demeanour he adopted was no great surprise. It was his fifth gold medal to go with a silver and two bronze medals.

However, it was Australia who made the faster start to the final, at one point building a lead of 0.695 seconds at the 2-kilometre mark before the Brits began to fight back.

Britain had set the previous record of 3min 51.659sec for the 4km race four years ago in winning Olympic gold in London, beating Australia in the final. The Chinese broke the world record in qualifying for the final and were too strong for Russians Anastasia Voinova and Daria Shmeleva as they sped to gold.

Dyer walked the line – positioning himself at the start-finish line to inform the riders of their pace – to allow endurance squad coach Heiko Salzwedel to watch from track centre.

“What he has achieved over the years in cycling across all disciplines – before he even got to the Games – is unrivalled”. It was all for this and we’ve done it.

Wiggins has said that he has had enough of the strict regime of endless training and sacrifices to his family life that comes with getting ready for another Olympic Games.

He said: “I don’t think him winning a medal of any colour will change his status in the country”.

At their pre-Games training camp in Newport, south Wales, Wiggins and Cavendish, who were rooming together, appeared to be getting on famously as they laughed, joked and belittled each other with the easy air of good mates.

“It’s surreal. To pull it off now is unbelievable”.

Another major surprise was Sweden pulling off quite the feat by knocking out the Olympic specialists and defending champions United States of America in the women’s football.

“I wanted to go out on top, and it was one of the best finals ever”. “This is the best team we’ve ever had”.

He said: “Truth be told, we haven’t won a fat deal between the London Olympics and now, and we have had some big downs”.

“We’ve been through the mill a bit”.

The respect is mutual, with Wiggins saying: “They [the Australians] are the reason we got out of bed in the morning, they motivated us”.

It was the fifth gold for the former Tour de France champion and eighth medal overall, breaking a tie with retired track cyclist Chris Hoy for most by a British athlete.

Four years later in Beijing he picked up two more golds on the track in the team pursuit and individual pursuit events, before switching to the road at London 2012, where he won the time trial.

It’s why he returned to the Olympics for one last shot at glory.

Skinner will face Constable again in the 1/8 finals while Kenny has been drawn against Fabian Hernando Puerta Zapata.

Mark Cavendish earlier this week suggested Wiggins was “super stressed” and had frozen the Manxman out of the team pursuit line-up.