Special Tweets of the Hour: Smashing

The world’s longest hour ever is finally over – the clock has been ticking since Paris-Roubaix but finally, on Sunday, Sir Bradley Wiggins hit the boards for his Hour attempt. Here’s a smattering of the good, the bad and the notorious from the day. I did not, however, include any of the 7,856,987 tweets that said “Wiggo’s smashing it!”

We were wrong …

The lovely Dan Wuori went for 56+km. He was wrong. It’s said that Braddles didn’t pass 55km because the air pressure in London was all wrong. I’m surprised that didn’t stop the trains. (“Wrong type of air.”)

Well, well, well, what do we have here? We have a car with bikes on top – a support car that followed Bradley as he went lap after lap … oh, hold it. No. It didn’t. It just wanted to be seen in the middle of the Velodrome. As did the man in black beside it (who as you can see above predicted 55-56+km – he was wrong too). We’ll get back to him in a bit.

Egad! He came out a teensy weensy bit strong!

And here we all thought the velodrome would be reverberating with the sounds of The Jam. We were wrong.

But there was food! Well, nutrition. SiS promised to give away gels if Braddles broke the record. (More on that later …)

Stuck in the middle with you

There are a lot of people out there who would pay serious money to know what these two were talking about.

But who let him in? Twitter was aquiver with outrage. This explanation from Cyclingnews. Well, at least he had to stump up some cash, I guess.

Meanwhile, back on the track

I think the less said about Wiggins’s cast iron ass the better. Let’s have some dignity!

The torture is over

54.526km was the distance. It is the distance a man goes to simulate childbirth. Apparently.

A sampling of responses.

Some famous names congratulated the Knight of the Realm.

That’s Miguel Indurain, in case you didn’t know, who made a special trip to watch, reports the Telegraph. They also got a fairly odd quote from Wiggins – another case of his deeply ironic sense of humour, we wonder?

While the man who started it all this last year had a few words to say.

A gracious Alex Dowsett was one of the first off the mark to send his congratulations. There were many who had hoped that Dowsett’s record would stand – I wouldn’t put it past him to come back and give it another go.

A hot iron and some appliques and that jersey is good to go. Well, it’s ready to go, not sure it’s ‘good’.

I have to say, the mismatch of colours, the gold shoes, the black socks, the electric blue bibs, the dark blue (or is it black?) jersey, the gold helmet, the RAF bullseye, the conflicting typefaces on everything – he should have taken his style tips from French women. Always remove one thing after you think you’re finished accessorising.

Those free SiS gels? Over half a million were given away, according to sources close to the gel machine.

Are those gels beer-flavoured then? Wow, I bet that would be a popular flavour.

Smash should only be about faux potatoes.

Never let it be said that David Millar lets an opportunity to self-promote pass him by. I don’t get the whole standing on Brailsford’s car like he broke the record – or calling down rain. Too many beer-flavoured gels, I suspect.