MORE cycling news. Olympic gold medallist and Tour de France rider Bradley Wiggins will be spending this Sunday lunchtime racing up a hill in Ramsbottom as fast as he can in an attempt to win £600.
The Lancashire town, which is only just recovering from hosting last month’s World Black Pudding Throwing Championships, is gearing up for the annual Rake Hill Climb this weekend.
If you can imagine an episode of Ski Sunday, transplanted from the Alps to Lancashire, with the competitors on bikes instead of skis and going uphill instead of downhill, you may get some idea of how it works. (Analogies were never my strong point.)
Sixty cyclists go, one at a time, on the 970-yard course, which starts at the Grant Arms Hotel in Market Square and climbs up to the Shoulder of Mutton pub at the top of the hill. Whoever completes the course in the fastest time wins the £600 first prize.
(I would, quite frankly, be amazed if a movie adaptation of the race, starring Simon Pegg and involving some contrived romantic sub-plot, were not already in production.)

Wiggins may have won gold in the 4km Individual Pursuit event at the Athens Olympics three years ago, but he faces a real challenge to carry off the big prize. Formby-based rider Jim Henderson has won the race five times, and may even start as favourite this weekend, despite Wiggins’ Olympic heroics. No sign of Floyd Landis, though.
Top cyclists including Graham Obree and Chris Boardman have taken part in the climb in the past, so Wiggins is in good company. And the turnout is always good too.
“We get bigger crowds than Bury do for their home matches,” said organiser Peter Graham, cruelly but accurately.
The first rider goes at noon on Sunday. As Alan Partridge once said, let battle commence.

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