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British Cycle Team in Mallorca to train for Olympics & Tour de France

Will cycling in Majorca will bring gold to British hopefuls?

featured in News & reviews Author James Fisher, Mallorca Video Reporter Updated

The British Olympic track team and the Tour de France hopeful Bradley Wiggins have been training in Mallorca ahead of the two biggest sporting events of the summer. The women's track team have been cycling in Mallorca twice in the last month training in the hills on the north of the island while staying in Alcudia. Wiggins used Majorca as his final training camp before what has been described as "the biggest race of his life", The Tour de France.

In her blog for The Telegraph World Champion Laura Trot said: "I’ve just returned from our second training camp in a month in Majorca, where we have been digging very deep indeed, training hard in the mountains for four or five hours a day. Instead of riding with lactic in your system for a minute and a half, we might spend an hour and a half working hard when the lactic acid has already kicked in.

It is all about lactic acid. In my main event, the team pursuit, which is 12 laps of the 250-metre track, you get hit by waves of lactic acid in the last minute and a half of a race that lasts 3min 15sec if you are riding at world record pace. How you deal with that is the key part of the race.

So that’s why we have been beasting it again in the hot sun with the ‘highlight’ of our training days being the 10km Sa Calobra climb, which averages a seven per cent gradient but can rear up to 25 per cent on some stretches. Ouch. Majorca’s own Alpe d’Huez. These road camps there are hard work but I love the routine and the confidence it gives you putting in all that high quality training."

Bradley Wiggins was also using Mallorca as a base before he sets off on a summer that could see him become one of cycling’s all time legends. Currently enjoying the best form of his career and hotly tipped to win the Tour de France Wiggins has already a had an outstanding season winning three of the five stage races he has started, Paris - Nice, the Tour of Romandie and the Dauphine Libere. If he can win the Tour and then go on to take a medal in the time trial at the London Olympics he will surely be remembered as one of Britian's greatest athletes.

It seems if you have gold in sight or a desire to win the most viewed sporting events of the summer then Mallorca is the place to train. Or you could just come and sit on the beach.

For more information visit our page on Cycling in Mallorca.