AFP/London
Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday said Britain’s Olympic cycling glory has driven France “mad”, and rejected claims of cheating by pointing out that the riders’ wheels are made across the Channel. “We’ve got a system that seems to be delivering. It’s driving the French mad,” Cameron told BBC radio in an interview.“I did an interview with French television yesterday and they virtually accused us of cheating. I think they found the Union Jacks on the Champs Elysees a bit hard to take,” he said, referring to Briton Bradley Wiggins’ victory last month in the Tour de France.In the interview with France 2 television broadcast on Wednesday evening, Cameron laughed off French suspicions about the hosts’ stellar success in the velodrome at the London Games.“The French should know our secret because you make our wheels,” Cameron said, referring to the French manufacturer Mavic. “You know they’re round. They go fast because they pedal hard,” he added, laughing.The British team took seven out of the 10 titles in the velodrome, prompting French technical director Isabelle Gautheron to say she was “perplexed” by the success and leading to calls on social networking sites of cheating.A majority (70%) of 50,000 people who responded to a question in the sports newspaper L’Equipe about whether the British were “tainted by cheating” also said they suspected foul play.But Cameron said: “I think that it’s unfair to think that just because someone wins you have to doubt it. The first reaction should be to say, ‘well done, congratulations’.“I understand that for France, which is a great cycling nation, that it must be a bit hard to take but we have really done well and I’m sure that if France had won we would have been happy for you,” he added, still smiling.Britain’s success has been seen as the perfect response to French President Francois Hollande’s quip early in the Games that the British had rolled out the red carpet for French winners after early successes, notably in the pool.Hollande’s ‘red carpet’ comments were a pointed retort to Cameron’s pledge to do the same for French businessmen fleeing a proposed 75% top rate of income tax. Relations between the pair have been strained since the prime minister declined to meet the then Socialist Party hopeful during a campaign trip to the UK ahead of May’s election.