Blazin' Saddles: Alternative facts – Wildcards, Wiggins and Walkowiak

Last weekend's victories for Nairo Quintana (Volta a la Comunitat), Lilian Calmejane (Etoile de Besseges), Diego Ulissi (GP Costa degli Etruschi), Damien Howson (Herald Sun Tour) and Marcel Kittel (Dubai Tour) were followed by a week largely devoid of any meaningful racing (sorry, Daryl Impey).

In fact, it says a lot for the state of cycling when most people, instead of discussing the performances of current riders on bikes, were left to muse on the skiing prowess of former riders trying to rehabilitate their images by taking to the piste with a bunch of washed-up celebrities and ex-sports stars in the Austrian Alps.

While riding his bike in the pro peloton, Bradley Wiggins managed to thrive by getting a jump on his competitors and staying two jumps ahead of his rivals. En route to winning the 2012 Tour de France, Wiggo and his Sky team-mate Chris Froome quite literally jumped the Shark by beating Vincenzo Nibali to the top two rungs of the podium in Paris – and prior to retirement, Wiggins, the jumped-up mod, promised he'd never stoop so low as to enter the celebrity Game of Thrones.

Well, it didn't take him long to change tack – In fact, you could say Wiggins shifted his opinion in a jiffy, no doubt to repair his plummeting public opinion after his recent controversies.

True to form, Wiggins took just a few seconds to ingratiate himself with the viewers of Channel 4's The Jump – a reality TV programme during which 'stars' take part in a variety of winter sports before being eliminated, one by one, on the eponymous ski jump – by swearing on live TV during his first interview on the slopes (a dig at the newspaper bent on uncovering proof of any rule-bending).

Ever the competitor, Wiggins effortlessly swapped lycra for salopettes, shrugging off a torn calf muscle in his first event – the slalom – to beat a chap best known for presenting a TV programme called Balls of Steel about a decade ago.

Heavily dosed up on painkillers, Wiggins has vowed to fight on in week two of the competition. And despite previously turning his back on a showbiz lifestyle while pulling his Twitter account in a bid to escape the celebrity circus, Wiggins also returned to social media (with a nonchalant "So what's been happening whilst I've been away?") ahead of The Jump. This week he even seemed comfortable enough to share a snippet of him behaving like a cross between Gene Simmons and Miley Cyrus.

Increasingly baffling are Wiggins' claims that he is ready to pursue a post-cycling career in television, with an appearance on EastEnders already touted following his previous cameo on the BBC radio soap, The Archers.

Of course, it's worth bearing in mind that it may not just be the Daily Mail that Wiggins is taking the piste out of...

When Giro d'Italia organisers RCS snubbed Italian pro-continental outfits Nippo-Vini Fantini and Androni Giocattoli in favour of foreign wildcards CCC Sprandi Polkowice and Gasprom-RusVelo, much was written about the fall from grace of Italian cycling – down from 13 teams in 2001 to just four (none of which at WorldTour level) in 2017.

It now emerges that the Nippo team of veteran maglia rosa winner Damiano Cunego have pulled the patriotism card by writing to RSC to ask that an exception be made to include themselves and Androni into the 100th edition of the race.

Details of the proposal include increasing the number of riders in the peloton from 198 to 210 and encouraging the four wildcard teams – which also include Italian outfits Bardiani-CSF and Willier-Selle – to downsize to eight riders. That would create 16 extra berths which could be filled with the addition of two extra eight-man teams.

And provided RCS don't plump for Direct Energie and Cofidis, then everyone should have a slice of the tiramisu.

It's a novel idea complete with a catchy #Giro100Italiano social media hashtag that at the very least makes complete sense in the centenary year of the corsa rosa. It's just a shame that, so far, the hashtag has been used just 24 times on Twitter: that's roughly once per hour at the time of writing.

The fact that Astana always wore the national colours of Kazakhstan seemed to indicate a flow of energy and resources from the top down. So it's interesting to see that in fact the flow is reversed, and that the Kazakh national team takes its lead from Astana – as you can see from this picture taken at the Asian Track Cycling Championships, which has Kazakhstan's Artyom Zakharov sporting an Astana-inspired Kazakhstan strip (complete with new oil-spill bib shorts).

What's also interesting is that the head of Zakharov – runner-up to Sanghoon Park of South Korea in the men's elite individual pursuit 4km – seems to be photoshopped. In fact, all three riders could well be standing in front of a green CGI screen for all we know. Come to think of it, did the 37th Asian Track Cycling Championships even take place?!?

When Switzerland's 1950 Tour winner Ferdi Kubler died towards the end of December aged 97, Frenchman Roger Walkowiak, surprise winner of the 1956 Tour, became the oldest living winner of the world's biggest bike race.

But Walkowiak's reign at the top lasted just five weeks after the 89-year-old passed away earlier this week, seeing Spanish 88-year-old doyen Federico Bahamontes, winner of the 1959 Tour, take over what has become something of a poisoned chalice. Let's hope the Eagle of Toledo flies much further than his predecessor.

The riders – or at least those for whom, like Sean Kelly, romance is no distraction – get back in the saddle this week with the Tour of Oman, which stars on Valentine's Day on Tuesday. Look out for golden boy Greg van Avermaet and fellow Belgian Tom Boonen, while the GC battle, for wont of better scenarios, should come down to a tussle between Fabio Aru and Romain Bardet.