Video: Cav makes Wiggins remark not realising he's live on BBC TV

Mark Cavendish embraced his family and then prepared for a BBC TV live interview, but he was live on air a little sooner than he thought!

 

With Team GB having been forced to fend off suggestions that two of its biggest stars Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish had fallen out at the Rio Olympics, remarks made by the latter on BBC TV last night won’t have helped.

Cavendish had just won a silver medal in the omnium – escaping being penalised when he caused a huge crash – and was waiting trackside to be interviewed by the BBC after embracing his wife and two young children.

Clearly irked that the BBC was taking so long to get to him, Cavendish said to the reporter: “They’d be straight on for Brad wouldn’t they, ay?”

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To be fair to the Manxman, he was smiling at the time and was also exhausted, with the end of two days of intense competition having just finished with a 40km points race.

However, it was the latest indication from Cavendish that he has been feeling overshadowed by the Olympic legend of Wiggins at these Games.

He also made it clear he was very disappointed to be left out of the team pursuit line-up, which went on to win gold and break the world record.

“That’s the reason I left the Tour early, because of the team pursuit,” Cavendish told Sky last week.

“The omnium; finishing the Tour would’ve been a benefit. It’s a little bit (disappointing) but it’s how it works.”

He added Wiggins had been super stressed in the run up to the team pursuit.

“He wants to be the hero and all that. I’m kind of just doing the omnium stuff now. That’s what I was aiming for the whole time. The team pursuit’s a bonus to that anyway.”

The remarks gave rise to many media reports claiming cracks were starting to appear in the camp, with Wiggins and Cavendish having already had a serious disagreement because of the Olympics in Beijing eight years ago.

Wiggins won the individual pursuit, which is no longer an Olympic event, as well as the team pursuit in 2008.

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But when it came to the Madison, which he was riding with Cavendish, Wiggins was below par leading to recriminations that he had been distracted by celebrating the two gold medals he had already collected.

They fell out but have since been close and worked very well together when team mates at Team Sky and when riding for Great Britain.

Cavendish appeared in bad form generally after his final race in Rio last night, having a testing exchange with a Dutch journalist who later took to Twitter to outline his version of what was said (see below).

Meanwhile, having caused a major crash in the points race last night, Cavendish has apologised, though gold winner Elia Viviani – who was one of the fallers – absolved the Briton of blame.

"It was my fault," Cavendish after the crash.

"I should've looked where I was going a bit more. I hope he's all right. I apologised to Elia, who went down."

 

Dutch reporter's account of Cav interview

 

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