Last Hurrah For Madison-genesis And Wiggins

Domestic heavyweights bow out of racing at Tour of Britain

Despite the looming prospect of unemployment hanging over them, the riders and staff of Madison-Genesis and Wiggins-Le Col seemed upbeat at the Tour of Britain.

Neither team has another race this season and their assets, including team buses, are set to be sold off or re-purposed.

Wiggins rider Gabriel Cullaigh, who is joining Movistar in 2020, said the environment was “no stress”. “There’s no pressure on the team to perform or please sponsors for next year,” he said. “We just want to do well because we want to do well.”

His feelings were reflected by Erick Rowsell, a veteran at Madison having been with the team for five years, who said they’d felt freer at this Tour with no sponsor considerations. “When you’re a domestic team at the Tour of Britain you’re meant to get in breakaways. But we thought, well, we’ve done that. We’ve done the Tour of Britain seven times now and we’ve been in breaks in every single edition, we’ve been in some that stayed away, we’ve raced for jerseys. What we’ve never had is someone in the top 10 on GC. We said, you know what, this is the last race. Let’s have one goal and just try and ride for GC.”