Bradley Wiggins Wins the Dauphine to Become Heavy Favourite for Tour De France

Bradley Wiggins rounded off a terrific performance this week by sealing victory in the Criterium du Dauphine today.

Today's final stage was taken by Katusha's Daniel Moreno who edged out Luis Leon Sanchez with Cadel Evans trailing in third in the uphill sprint. Meanwhile, Wiggins rolled safely over the line with both arms in the air in celebration.

Wiggins now joins the select club of Miguel Indurain, Lance Armstrong and Alejandro Valverde as back-to-back winners of the race. This comes after an already excellent season which has seen him win Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie. As such he is now the heavy betting favourite for the Tour de France and with good reason.

The Team Sky rider may have been disappointed to miss out by one second to Australia's Luke Durbridge in the opening prologue but will have been encouraged that he beat time-trial specialist Tony Martin and Tour contender Cadel Evans.

After taking the yellow jersey in the following stage, Wiggins has ridden an almost flawless race to take the overall victory.

While in yellow on the following day the Brit ensured that he was always close to rival Cadel Evans and the knowledge that he had such a strong team around him enabled him to ride a very mature stage.

Thursday's time trial showed why Wiggins has to be seen as the favourite for next month's Tour de France.

Wiggins dominated the 53.5-km stage from Villie-Morgon to Bourg-en-Bresse, finishing 34 seconds ahead of world time-trial champion Tony Martin and crushing current Tour champion Cadel Evans by one minute and 43 seconds.

This year's Tour contains two long time trials and if Wiggins can perform as well as he did this week then the time losses that his rivals incur could be too much to regain in the mountains.

Wiggins did lose eight seconds to Cadel Evans in yesterday's penultimate stage but under his teammates he once again performed admirably. Michael Rogers and Chris Froome will be especially important to Wiggins in France next month. The duo finished second and fourth overall, respectively.

After a crash in the time trial, we did not get to see how much of a threat Andy Schleck will be in the mountains, and he remains the biggest threat to Wiggins in the Tour.

Wiggins' superb form this season has led some people to ask whether he has peaked too early for a Tour de France win. To this Wiggins responded, "If I didn't take the jersey or perform here then I'm the biggest piece of rubbish out there but if I win here I've peaked too soon."

Peaking too soon should be a worry but the momentum that Wiggins has at the moment is almost unheard of and this should far outweigh the worries.

With the strongest team surrounding him it is all looking very good for Wiggins as we make our way toward the opening prologue of the Tour de France in Liège on June 30th.