You can tell the Tour de France isn't far away: there's another major drugs scandal in the news. This one's a big one. It rivals the Festina scandal from 1998, with Floyd Landis accusing Lance Armstrong, Johan Bruyneel and just about everyone else from his days at US Postal and Phonak.

Floyd doesn't pull his punches. Some of it we have heard before, but his attack on the UCI is potentially the most damaging to our sport. Bike racing's world governing body and its former president, Hein Verbruggen, were quick to dismiss Landis's allegation that Armstrong and Bruyneel made a payment to ensure that a positive test for EPO at the Tour of Switzerland in 2001 was suppressed.

A separate storm is brewing over another payment. Armstrong told CW, in November 2008, that he had made a donation of $25,000 to the UCI in 2005. Last week, current UCI president Pat McQuaid admitted on Irish radio that the payment was in fact $100,000, $88,000 of which was spent on a Sysmex machine. Of the remaining $12,000 McQuaid said: "We had $12,000 change out of it, so what odds does that make?"

The same day, on another continent, Armstrong gave a press conference and was asked if he had ever paid the UCI any money. "Absolutely not." he replied.

First day out in their first Grand Tour and Team Sky have come up trumps. Bradley Wiggins swept away the disappointment of Sky's lacklustre Classics campaign when he rode the time trial of his life to claim the Giro's pink leader's jersey on Saturday.

After years of prologue near-misses, Wiggo produced a road performance equal to his Olympic and World Championship track success and duly justified the hype surrounding the new British super-squad.

After that incredible fourth place in last year's Tour de France there was absolutely no doubting Bradley's GC credentials, but the time trials never went quite to plan. He took the Dauphiné prologue in 2007, raising hopes for the London Grand Départ, but finished fourth, was beaten by just one second in the final time trial of last year's Giro and then was third in the opening time trial of the Tour.

Wiggo was becoming a nearly man, but Sky team boss Dave Brailsford knew there was still untapped potential.

"Brad can win big bike races like this if he really goes for it," Brailsford reasoned. "We thought, let's really put our minds to it."

It's an impressive start and according to a Sky sports director, Sean Yates "a proper stepping stone" for the Tour de France in a couple of months' time.

A week or so ago I was at a race in Luxembourg and had the idea to write a blog about the strength and success of the British female riders on the continent. I think that the British cycling media would be blowing a very loud trumpet if we had seen British men claim a 1-2 in Flèche Wallonne (Pooley, Cooke), a first place in a UCI TT (Pooley), a first place in a TT stage of a UCI stage race (Trott) and then a further win in a UCI 1.1 event (Pooley), all in the space of three weeks.

This is no small feat; the Brits have been truly sat on the top of the pile in women's cycling, and do not forget that behind every winner there are five workers; I know that Cooke and Pooley would be the first to admit that their British team-mates deserved to stand on the podium with them. Unfortunately the coverage of these successes has not been huge so I thought that a little boasting on the girl's behalf would not go amiss.

What a sad occurrence has taken place since my initial thought to write about these successes though. My sincere best wishes go to all five girls for a speedy, smooth recovery and comeback. What more can I say over the incident? I am sure that I am no position to make judgements here; all I know about the accident is what I have read, very brief as it was, the nurse driving the car simply ‘did not see the cyclists'. You could not ask for a more simple statement.

If the girls had sustained their injuries during a race, would it be easier to swallow for both them and the rest of those who know them? Maybe so; bike racing is accepted as a dangerous sport- scraps, cuts and breaks are a part of it. But should we, as cyclists, accept that such injuries can also be sustained just as easily during training?

If we ride with caution, respect and the right protection (Emma has openly admitted that without a helmet she would not be here now), there is nothing more that we can do. So the rest is out of our control; someone talking on a mobile, someone checking their GPS, a stranger not familiar with the road layout, a driver misjudging distance or speed.... The list could go on and on; in each case the driver is seemingly the guilty party. But what covers all of these circumstances is a lack of focus and concentration on the task in hand, the task being to drive responsibly with complete awareness. Can you honestly say that you are a perfect driver? I know that I cannot. In a perfect world this accident would not have happened.  

I simply wish the girls a speedy recovery, both physically and mentally, the scars of the later can so often be deeper and more prolonged than the former in such circumstances.

I know I'm tempting fate but I am really amazed by how few punctures I have these days. I've been keeping count and in the past 12 months I have only had to change one inner tube, which is a record for me.

OK, I'm not in any danger of breaking any mileage records but in a year that's got to be more than 50 rides, none less than an hour.

You can relax, this isn't the slow build-up to plug a particular tyre; my modest annual mileage was achieved on four different brands so by my reckoning the majority of modern clinchers are all pretty good.

All those years ago when I first started riding you needed tubulars if you wanted to race or just to ride fast. For those, unlike me, with loads of money, it was fine. The more you spent on your tubs, the less likely you were to puncture. And to add to the expense, the idea was to keep a stock of these things in a darkened cellar to mature.

My only spares were strapped under the saddle and as I rode the cheapest tyres available - nicknamed ‘wobblers' - I remember one particularly bad week when three flats not only bankrupted me but also saw me banished to the garage to spend my evenings busy with the tub cement.