Saturday's prologue has a length of 8.5 km (five mile) on roads Bradley Wiggins knows better than
anyone else in the field. It's the second Tour for the Cofidis rider. Wiggins told British newsagency Reuters: "I learned
a lot last year about preparation and what it takes." Wiggins was 16th in last years prologue in Strassbourg. Wiggins
continued by saying: "This year's course is better suited to me, wide roads, sweeping bends, a lot of time to get up a good
rhythm, to get up to 60kph and just sit on that." About the course Wiggins said: "It's going through Hyde Park where I started
cycling as a kid and I never imagined I'd be riding the prologue of the Tour de France down the Serpentine one day."
Wiggins told that his first Tour [last year] was a great experience, saying: "The wall of sound every rider
gets around the course is just unexplainable, you can't hear yourself breathing, you can't hear the encouragement from your
team car which is only 20 metres behind you," he said.
"That was Strasbourg but all that's going to be magnified by about 100 times in London. The Olympics was big
but this is like the Olympics coming to town every day for three weeks, that's the scale of this race."
Wiggins's returned to the track world championships for the first time in four years in March and scooped
gold in the individual and team pursuits. His first Tour made him stronger he said. "Nothing seems that hard after doing the
Tour de France," Wiggins said. "When you've suffered a mountain stage on the Tour, four minutes of pain in the pursuit
just doesn't seem that complicated any more.
"No matter how hard something feels, there's always an end. That is the lesson I took from the Tour last year."
