KEY POINTS:
London - The Tour de France drags its competitors through every kind of agony for three weeks but British cyclist Bradley Wiggins is not allowing himself to think beyond the first nine minutes.
That is about how long it will take to cover the 8.5km prologue through the centre of London tomorrow when time trial and track specialist Wiggins seeks to give his hometown crowd a spectacular introduction to the sport's ultimate event.
Wiggins goes into the race, his second Tour, among the favourites to win the prologue on roads he knows better than anyone else in the field.
"It's going through Hyde Park, where I started cycling as a kid, and I never imagined I'd be riding the prologue of the Tour de France down the Serpentine one day," Wiggins said.
He has won four Olympic medals, including gold in the 4000m pursuit in Athens in 2004, and a clutch of world championship medals, but says nothing can compare with the first day of the Tour.
"The wall of sound every rider gets around the course is just unexplainable: you can't hear yourself breathing, you can't hear the encouragement from your team car which is only 20 metres behind you."
Wiggins, 27, is in top form, having won the prologue at last month's prestigious Dauphine Libere, and with London's course similarly straightforward, everything is in place for a dream day for British cycling.
- Reuters
