“I know you lot won’t like that, will you?”
You lot?! 26 seconds of that pure Bradley Wiggins bravado we have all come to know so well.
As the song sweepingly goes in the aptly named Beauty & The Beast… ‘Tale as old as time’.
The never-ending British past-time of seeing an Irish person gain success and acclaim and thinking, ‘We’ll have some of that’, has continued on Eurosport, courtesy of Bradley Wiggins.
The broadcaster’s ‘Breakaway’ show was looking back on Stage 10 of the Tour de France, which was won by Irish sprinter Sam Bennett, with Wiggins and Sean Kelly in the guests’ couch to give their expert opinions.
Kelly, a former world champion and green jersey winner at ‘Le Tour’, and Wiggins, a two-time tour winner, were reflecting on Bennett’s pipping of fellow sprinters Caleb Ewan and Peter Sagan. Wiggins, in the mood for some fun, commented:
“He’s still relatively young, in cycling terms, and he’s a young sprinter, really. We can almost consider him British.”
“I know that you lot won’t like that, will you?” Wiggins then asked Kelly – a proud Carrick-on-Suir man, like Bennett. All Kelly could manage was a head-shake, followed by a bemused smirk.
Wiggins pressed on, about knowing Bennett for a number of years before Kelly found his voice.
KELLY: You’re not going to claim him!
WIGGINS: No… but we spoke to him at the Vuelta last year when he came on our show. At least we can understand what he’s saying. We can’t really understand what you’re saying, Sean, can we?
For 26 seconds, that is some strike-rate of playful jabs for Wiggins.
THE FUCKING NECK. And then he comes back with another insult.
Sean should've decked him. pic.twitter.com/7QtmFoutfu
— Aidan Gannon (@onthenickel) September 9, 2020
We won’t go around banging any pots and pans about this one. Wiggins was surely on the wind-up and Kelly did well to bite his tongue.
We will just conclude with the short and sweet words of Dermot Kennedy when he was recently claimed as a British success story:
‘Thank you for the kind words, but as Paul Mescal once said, “I’m Irish”.’
Maith an fear.
For the record, Bennett and Wiggins were both born in Belgium. Bennett was raised in Carrick while Wiggins was raised in London from the age of two.
