Wiggins is the revelation of this Tour

While all the attention of the British media at the Tour de France was on four-time stage winner Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins has quietly crept into third place and is worrying the Tour leader Alberto Contador, writes Richard Williams in the Guardian. "Contador paid the Englishman the compliment of saying that since he fears his prowess in the time-trial in Annecy on Thursday, he plans to attack over the next two days in order to widen an advantage over Wiggins currently standing at 1min 46sec."

It's not just fellow riders who are waking up to the threat of the quiet and engaging Londoner: "'Incredible Wiggins,' L'Equipe called him yesterday, analysing his part in the explosive climax to Sunday's stage 15 on the ascent to Verbier, when he outclimbed Carlos Sastre, Cadel Evans and Lance Armstrong while vaulting from fifth to third in the overall standings, the highest position taken by a British rider into the final week of the race. 'A surprise, a mystery, a revelation,' wrote the correspondent of La Gazzetta dello Sport."

This being cycling, though, such expressions "are often used as a coded expression of doubt - which, in cycling, means only one thing. Thanks to the recent examples of Floyd Landis, Michael Rasmussen and Ricardo Ricco, sudden improvements in performance now give rise to suspicion." Wiggins, a three-time Olympic gold medal winner, strongly refutes such suggestions, insisting on his Twitter feed that "I ain't no Bernhard Kohl", the Austrian rider "stripped of the King of the Mountains jersey last year after testing positive for EPO".

Wiggins' great improvements in the sport have come from changing his focus - "after winning his second and third Olympic gold medals in Beijing, he finished his celebrations and then put everything into his ambition to become a great road racing cyclist." This meant changing his body shape, losing more than 10 per cent of his body weight in coming down from 82kg to 71.5kg.

With the second-placed Lance Armstrong's desire set to be truly tested over the next few days, Wiggins could yet step up another level in this tournament. "No Tour de France is complete without sudden narrative twists, and the next two days feature five big climbs, including the hors-catégorie Col du Grand Saint-Bernard. There may yet be a further surprise or two in store for, or from, Bradley Wiggins," concludes Williams. ·