Lame Victory Speech
 

1. Stupid joke about raffle tickets
2. "Don't get too drunk tonight"
3. All in English.

Yup.

The other thing I noticed was Wiggins' almost nonchalant, left hand on his waist attitudinal stance while his country's national anthem was being sung by that awful singer. In contrast, Froome and Nibali were standing in a dignified manner.

Did you guys noticed that? Almost like a contempt for the singer or the Queen.

Yup, the body language showed contempt and non-interest.

Eh... he's a bike rider not an orator. I do always appreciate a good "Get home safely".

You guys aren't his intended audience. We don't generally do the hands over our hearts, looking fervently patriotic stuff when the national anthem is sung, like you do. And that was a seriously awful, cheesy bit of nationalistic display. Wiggins was deliberately distancing himself from that, much as to say "I'm still a working class lad who knows where he comes from, I'm not going to buy in to all this self-important BS".

Some of the watching Brits will disapprove of that, as you do. Others will relish it - there's a strong streak of cynicism in British society, especially about the motives of those who constantly appeal to patriotism. But whether they liked it or not, most of them will have got what he was doing.

And given that's what he was doing, there wouldn't have been much point in doing it in French.

Okay. All I would have love to see is Wiggins just standing still (as Froome and Nibali did), and it would have been okay with me. Like tagaproject6 said, his body language just oozed contempt. Whether for the singer or the Queen, I don't know.

I don't care if he's patriotic. Let me propose an appropriate victory speech:

(in French) -

• Thank you FRANCE, for creating and hosting the most beautiful bike race in the world.
• Thank you my fellow competitors, for making this race what it is - I salute you as adversaries and brothers.
• Thank you FANS for making it all worth while and exciting.
• Thank you Team SKY for all your sacrifices, this victory belongs to you as much as me.
• Thank you to my family; I love you and I'll be coming home soon.

Wow, I teared up a little bit reading that just now...:)

What a lame reason to dislike a rider.

When there are so many available.

He's been in yellow - what - 2/3 of the Tour? Plenty of time to rehearse. Somehow Sally Field's infamous "You like me! You really like me!" at Oscar's does not sound all that atrocious any more. At least she enunciated.....

You gleaned all that, how?

I thought that he was experiencing physical pain listening to Lesley Garrett's rendition.

A pet peeve of mine forever is people who are not prepared for possibilities when the probability is there. Like, you are nominated for an Oscar or whatever with other people, and you did not take time (like two minutes) to prepare beforehand, write a little note/speech, and then when your name is called as the winner, you get up on there and make an a$$ of yourself.

I don't even care if you have to read the darn speech from a piece of paper, just have something thoughtful and meaningful to say!

Yes!

My non-cycling friends commented today that the winner didn't have much to say on the podium.

But it was a thorough win.

Why does it even matter? He won a BICYCLE RACE, not a speech writing contest. Who cares.
This is such a spectator thing to do. Nit pick stupid crap.
If you don't like Wiggins, no matter what he does, people are going to talk ****.

Compare Wiggo's lame speech and less that sterling attitude on the podium to Cadel's own acceptance speech.

Cadel is clearly a man who respects his country as well as the host country. The first words out of his mouth were in French. Perhaps Cadel, not having being annointed as the "winner" at the start of the Tour as Wiggo was, was a tad more appreciative of his victory.

The funny thing is how Liggett and Sherwin kept commenting on how Wiggo is fully fluent in French. Hell, the man is barely fluent in the mother tongue! Maybe it is an "English thing" as some have mentioned here but I still think that it was a very poor showing.

lol!!!

As a brit, I feel the queen to be a waste of space.
As someone with ears, I know the singer was a waste of space.

Correct on both counts...and I am not even British!

I gleaned all that because I've seen, heard, and done it (not after winning the Tour, obviously) before. You have to understand how very different British culture, especially British working-class culture, is from yours.

He clearly was in pain at Lesley Garrett, too. Who wouldn't have been?

Yea.. Ever hear a Mike Tyson victory speech?

So he didn't make any of his speech in French - so what? I've had the envy-riddled, monoglot, pleasure of seeing him answer questions in fluent French, with grace and humour - along with the occasional fairly brutal putdown (so I'm told). So like the home life of your own, dearly loved, Lance Armstrong ;) If you've already answered the French media in their own language, I'd say it's pretty unlikely that they'll take offence at the man L'Equipe called, affectionately, "Wiggo le Froggy" - which might, conceivably, be a French culturally referenced joke about tradional British, esp. English, headline writers attitudes to the French, aka known, in some circles, by the respectful cognomen of "cheese eating surrender monkeys", tho' I can't source that. Perhaps some of you might be able to help me out there.

And as for criticisms of how he stood! How we, as Brits, deal with our national anthem, is our business. If Americans want to stand there, checking that the guvmint hasn't put its hands their wallets, that's your business. Wiggins knows, and understands more about the history, culture and traditions of bike racing than the majority (very large) of the forumers on this site, including me.

The raffle joke? Simply a British cultural reference, familiar to everyone who's attended a British cycling club dinner and which raised, I suspect, a wry smile in those of us who aren't Yanks with the hairs of their arse tied together.

I thought Wiggins was remarkably restrained during the anthem. I would have got off the podium and strangled Lesley Garrett to stop that noise coming out of her. I would have liked Wiggins to say a bit in French, something like "Merci tout le monde, allez les Rodbifs" and for him to shake hands with Froome and Nibali. But Wiggins is a very anti-establishment sort of guy and he'd probably just tell all us "w*nkers" to "b*gger off".

Indeed. Actually it's an interesting business, trying to explain Brit manners to Americans. They assume, because of the hierarchical, class-ridden element, and the way the media play up to all the traditionalist imagery, that we are polite. Actually, routine discourse in the UK is so "disrespectful" - to choose an American word - that it would get one shot in the US. As a frequent visitor to the States I am always struck by how conformist it seems, and how much more foreign I feel there - despite a common language, and our constant saturation with American popular culture - than I do in countries like France, Spain, Italy, despite the language barrier.

It doesn't have to be this hard. A simple "thank you to those that made this possible" in ANY language would have made him look like less of an arrogant jackass in my book.