MAIDA Vale cyclist Bradley Wiggins was still celebrating this week despite failing to become the first British athlete in 80 years to bag a hat-trick of Olympic golds. The 28-year-old finished up with a brace of gold medals in Beijing after his successes

MAIDA Vale cyclist Bradley Wiggins was still celebrating this week despite failing to become the first British athlete in 80 years to bag a hat-trick of Olympic golds.

The 28-year-old finished up with a brace of gold medals in Beijing after his successes in the 4,000m individual pursuit and the team pursuit.

Wiggins had hoped to improve on his sublime performances in the 2004 Athens games where he became the first British cyclist for 40 years to win three medals at one Games - gold, silver and bronze.

But Wiggins suffered a rare disappointment on Tuesday when he and fellow Briton Mark Cavendish failed to land the men's Madison event.

It was a race too far for Wiggins and the British pair - the hot favourites - finished well out of the medals in ninth place behind surprise gold medallists Argentina.

Wiggins claimed his Athens gold in the individual pursuit and his quest for the rare hat-trick in Beijing began in the best possible way when he clocked 4 minutes 16.977 to retain his crown in the 4,000m event at the weekend.

Wiggins kept the pressure on throughout and steadily increased his pace to beat New Zealand's Hayden Roulston by almost three seconds.

Wiggins had been tipped to challenge Chris Boardman's 12-year-old world record put pronounced himself satisfied with the manner of his first golden success.

"I had to play it safe and not chase world records," said Wiggins. "I'm just pleased it's over. This is just the first one of the three."

Wiggins had underlined his well-being by landing a hat-trick of gold medals at the World Championships held in Manchester in March.

There, Wiggins won the individual, Madison and team pursuits and on Monday the cycling star teamed up with Paul Manning, Geraint Thomas, and Ed Clancy to comfortably win the team event in a new world record of 3mins 53.314 secs.

"It was phenomenal," said Wiggins of the world record. "I was pretty down after the first couple of rounds because I wasn't my self and didn't want to let these guys down."

"To put it [the time] into perspective, that was 11 seconds faster than the Olympic record we set in Sydney eight years ago.

"I know how much these guys have sacrificed for this one event. It's just fantastic to be part of this team. We've come a long way in four years."

Wiggins is now looking forward to adding to his six Olympic medals in his home city of London in 2012.