Rio 2016: Mark Cavendish makes Bradley Wiggins joke unaware he's on live TV

Mark Cavendish isn’t known to be one who will hold one’s tongue, so it was rather in character when an interview with the BBC caught him making a joke about their treatment of him compared to his British teammate Sir Bradley Wiggins.

Cavendish ended his eight-year quest for an Olympic medal on Monday night when he took silver in the men’s omnium following a thrilling climax in the points race that saw him hold off Denmark’s defending Olympic champion Lasse Norman Hansen by just two points.

When BBC presenter Claire Balding handed over to her colleague Jill Douglas down in the centre of the velodrome, 31-year-old Cavendish was already waiting for the live broadcast to go out, and the delay to his post-race interview was not lost on the Manxman who quickly joked that his teammate Wiggins wouldn’t be kept waiting.

“They’d be straight on for Brad, wouldn’t they!” Cavendish said, unaware the cameras were already rolling.

Cavendish also went on to explain that he slowed down in the individual pursuit event in the omnium in order to finish in a slower time than Wiggins’s Olympic record in the 4km event, set back at Beijing 2008.

Cavendish claimed that, had he beaten Wiggins’ mark, it would have been taken as a direct attack on his British teammate following his admission from the team pursuit line-up, which saw Wiggins join Ed Clancy, Owain Doull and Steven Burke on their way to gold last week. He also described the stories that would come out of his comments as “click-bait” in an effort to try and create stories that claimed they weren’t friends.

"I had to slow down. I would've gone for Brad's (Olympic) record, but you guys would start click-baiting that I did it because I didn't want to be friends with him,” Cavendish explained.