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Video: Bradley Wiggins and crew make podium in his first race on water following switch to rowing

Third place on the Thames for five-time Olympic cycling champion at Veterans Head of the River rowing race

It’s 20 years since Sir Bradley Wiggins made a cycling podium at the UCI Junior World Championships in 1998 when he won the individual pursuit – and while he may not have been on the top step today at the Veterans Head of the River Race on London’s River Thames, we imagine he’ll be satisfied with his third place finish today in his first outing on the water.

The five-time Olympic cycling gold medallist has made the switch to rowing, apparently with an eye to claiming a place in one of Team GB’s boats at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020.

It’s an ambitious objective, and one that at the age of 37 is in all likelihood behind him, not least because with less than two and a half years to go until the Games start, British Rowing will already have identified the rowers likely to merit a seat.

And that's before you take any other considerations into account, such as the controversy Wiggins has found himself embroiled in over the past year and a half due to the Therapeutic Use Exemptions granted to him and the whole Jiffy Bag episode.

More than 200 coxed crews took part in Sunday’s race which saw them set off in sequence on the four-and-a-half-mile Championship Course on the Thames from Mortlake to Putney, rowing in the opposite direction on the Tideway to Saturday’s Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Races.

Seeded seventh, the Thames Scullers School crew Wiggins rowed with finished third overall, beaten by winners Molesley Boat Club and Thames Rowing Club, and also finished second to Molesey in the Men’s Master’s B coxed eights category that both were in.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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4 comments

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BehindTheBikesheds | 6 years ago
1 like

Lol, Vets race, I reckon even with my gammy shoulder and nearing 50 I could have been in this boat and got third, total bullshit and it's not a relevant article to cycling. He's a rower now, let the rowing lot take the piss for the sham that this is!

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jerome | 6 years ago
1 like

"his first race on water"

Do you mean he had no TUE?

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Leviathan replied to jerome | 6 years ago
1 like
jerome wrote:

"his first race on water"

Do you mean he had no TUE?

Dihydromonoxide is a well known performance enhancing compound endemic amongst the pro peloton.

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IanMunro | 6 years ago
0 likes

Which ones work at Tesco?

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