It’s been a great few days for cycling, Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de Romandie at the weekend and today we announced that we will be extending our partnership with British Cycling for a further four years to the end of 2016.

Our partnership is unique compared to other brands since we support all levels of cycling, across all disciplines from grassroots through to elite with our main aim to encourage more people to get back on their bikes and become fans of cycling. To date we have got almost 700,000 new regular cyclists in the UK on their bikes so we’re on track to hit our target of one million more regular cyclists by 2013.

The creation of Team Sky has provided the nation with a team to get behind and we hope inspire people to get on their bikes whilst Sky Ride, now going into its fourth year, gives people the chance to get back on their bikes from traffic-free city events to local weekly community rides though out the year.

Last summer alone we saw over 200,000 people participating in over 20 city events and this year is set to be even bigger and better. New to Sky Ride are Social Cycling groups which encourage an informal network of riding groups across the UK so we can capitalise on the excitement around cycling this year.

None of this would have come about if were not for our ground-breaking partnership with British Cycling which began in 2008, and it’s a real sign of the success of the relationship and the long term benefit Sky can bring to sports. I’m really proud that British Cycling said today that we have been ‘a key factor in cycling’s phenomenal success story’ and we should all be very excited about the future of cycling - not only on the track but on roads up and down the UK as more and more people get back in the saddle.