Bradley Wiggins (13 page)

When you’ve known somebody a long time, you don’t necessarily want to talk about bike riding non-stop, even if it is at the heart of each of your professions. In spite of his love of
the history of the sport, Brad in particular is well known for his interests outside bike racing. ‘When I talk to Brad it’s usually about scooters, his family, watches, old bike races .
. .’ observes Anthony. ‘He can be great fun on a night out. He is an incredible impressionist. After Cav’s win at the World Championships in Copenhagen, we sat outside a bar and
Brad pulled off a few incredible impressions of people; so good that he could have been them.’

As mentioned earlier, there are three prerequisites for any Tour de France winner: climbing prowess, time trial ability and the strength to perform for three weeks without
faltering.

When Bradley Wiggins first became a professional cyclist, only one of those attributes was apparent. His background in track pursuiting was a typical grounding for a
rouleur
, the type
of rider who can do a great job for a team, grinding out miles at an uncomfortably high speed and pulling a race along. They also make great time triallists.

The young professional’s role models were two other members of that select band: Englishmen who had worn the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. Sean Yates, the great
rouleur
who
went on to become Bradley’s DS at Team Sky, and Chris Boardman, the über-technician who lifted science in cycling to an art form. Like Brad, both were Olympic pursuiters: Yates in the
four-man team pursuit in Moscow as a twenty-year-old in 1980, Boardman the toast of the nation after his dismantling of Jens Lehmann in Barcelona in 1992. Brad first became an Olympic pursuiter in
Sydney, winning a bronze medal as part of the team pursuit quartet.

The careers of Yates and Boardman took vastly differing routes to success.

Yates’s path was the more traditional. Like the other precious few Brits who ‘made it’ in European cycling in the 1980s, he followed the path of earlier British pioneers like
Brian Robinson and Tom Simpson in packing a bag and heading off to ride for a French amateur team in return for little more than a bed and a baguette a day. His appetite for work was soon
recognised and he found himself turning professional in the iconic chequered jerseys of the venerable Peugeot team.

Chris Boardman was always a bit different; a bit special, you might say. He dominated British amateur cycling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, unbeatable in time trials and winning a lot of
the road races he liked to enter occasionally. Along with his coach, Peter Keen, he revolutionised the slapdash approach to cycling that had prevailed until then. His stunning victory in Barcelona
was achieved on a carbon monocoque bike designed by the errant genius, Mike Burrows, that paradoxically took something away from his athletic prowess, as Joe Public seemed to think the bike could
have ridden itself to a gold medal. If they had been followers of Boardman’s progress over preceding seasons, they would have reasoned that he would have taken the Olympic pursuit title on a
Raleigh Chopper. Keen went on to become the trailblazing performance director for British Cycling, a role to be expanded and refined by his successor Dave Brailsford, now Wiggins’s paymaster
at Team Sky.

Boardman and Keen carefully stage-managed an attempt on cycling’s Blue Riband, the World Hour Record. Taking to the wooden track in Bordeaux at the same time as the Tour de France was
passing through the city, Boardman beat the record with a ride that catapulted him into the broader cycling world’s public consciousness. Combined with his stellar amateur experience, the
hour record enabled Boardman to pull off the unprecedented feat of turning professional as a team leader. He turned up at his first Tour de France in 1994 and won the prologue in the fastest time
ever recorded for any stage in the famous old race.

It is unsurprising then that Wiggins’s pedigree marked him out as a natural
rouleur
and ‘tester’, as British cyclists unerringly call time trial specialists. His
long-limbed ranginess and smooth pedalling style, honed over many years on the track, were ideally suited to riding against the clock. He confirmed this as long ago as 2003, when he won the
individual time trial in the Tour de l’Avenir, literally the Tour of the Future, the under-23 Tour de France.

His five previous Tour appearances had featured some notable time trial efforts, none more so than the near miss at the prologue in London in 2007, but no name-in-lights rides. But, of course,
he had never ridden a time trial in the yellow jersey before.

Cadel Evans’s 2011 Tour de France victory was founded on his time trialling prowess. Gutsily trading blows with the Schlecks, Contador et al in the mountains, it was the penultimate
day’s time trial that saw the BMC man shoulder his way past the younger Schleck and into yellow, the last time the jersey would change hands in that compelling race. Just ten seconds behind
Wiggins on this Monday morning, Evans too could be forgiven for dreaming of wearing yellow again.

When our old friend Fabian Cancellara, serial World Time Trial Champion cruises through the finish line in Besançon, it is with the air of a professional confident about a job well done.
Though he has dropped well out of contention for the overall victory after two days in the
moyenne montagnes,
he is still very much the main man in the time trial. This is his last chance
to gauge his form before his next time trial, his defence of the Olympic title in London on the first day of next month. The Swiss Olympic team have even decided to take up residence in the Mitre
Hotel for London 2012, situated on the race’s start line at Hampton Court, such is their confidence in their leader.

‘That should be enough to win it,’ he reportedly tells his audience at the finish. Not renowned for bragging, we can accept his word that 52 minutes and 21 seconds is indeed pretty
swift for the 41.5 rolling kilometres that separate Besançon from today’s start house in Arc-et-Senans.

Chris Froome’s time trialling career had inauspicious beginnings. Turning out for the country of his birth, Kenya, at the 2006 World Championships, he managed to ride down the start ramp
and straight into a UCI official. It takes some doing to overcome a reputation like that, but in becoming a major tour contender in his own right, he was knocking out some startlingly good time
trial rides, not least one at altitude in Spain last year when he took the red jersey of leader in the Vuelta. Today he flashes through the first time check as the fastest man on the road. Yes,
quicker than Cancellara.

Evans is the penultimate man out on the course, and his time compared with Froome is amazing. Amazingly bad. He has somehow lost almost a minute to the Team Sky man, and Froome’s leader
hasn’t even got to this point yet.

Wiggins is on his way, though. Watching Wiggins ride today is like watching a thoroughbred on Epsom Downs. Troy, Nijinsky or Frankel: little effort, minimum movement, maximum speed. Somewhere in
a zone uninhabited by mere mortals, his stealthy black Pinarello is counterbalanced by the eyecatching yellow skinsuit of race leader, his mirrored helmet lens reflecting the road ahead as he eats
it up. A single RAF roundel, the mark of the mod, sits subtly on the front of his helmet, Brad’s sense of fashion confounding even the Tour’s attempts to make him as garish as possible.
Calf-high black aero overshoes mask the fact that the distance from Brad’s knee to toe is as long as many people’s entire inside leg. Those legs turn with a sublimely supple motion that
brings to mind a Ferrari ticking over at 90mph in the inside lane.

He puts more than a minute into Cadel Evans in the first 16km.

Those first 16km are easily the defending champion’s worst of the day, but there’s no coming back from a deficit like that. By the time he reaches Besançon, Evans knows he is
staring down both barrels. He has endured a couple of difficult days in the mountains, but his attacking performances have given him great heart and he has lost time to nobody. Here in the time
trial, however, his traditional happy hunting ground, he is scrabbling in the dust left not only by Bradley Wiggins, but Chris Froome too. Tonight, sixth place will be his only consolation for his
efforts on a hot day in the shadow of the Alps.

There is no discernible change in Wiggins’s rhythm as he approaches the line, but with Yates talking to him via an earpiece for the whole ride and driving yards behind him in the team
Jaguar, Brad certainly knows that he is ‘on a ride’. Having the honour of starting last, as befits a yellow jersey wearer in a Tour time trial, he also has the comfort of knowing
exactly what he has to do to overcome all those who started before him.

He breaks the beam at 51 minutes and 24 seconds, and wins his first ever stage in the Tour de France. There is something magnificent about yellow jersey wearers winning stages in the race, an
affirmation that they are deserved and rightful torchbearers. Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Miguel Indurain, Lance Armstrong – memories of them popping Champagne corks on the victory podiums
clad in the
maillot jaune
are powerful ones that resonate down through the years. To those images in our heads we can add Bradley Wiggins in Besançon.

While Wiggins’s win is, to some extent, predictable – he is clearly in the form of his life and a master of this particular discipline – Chris Froome’s second place is a
fantastic bonus. Team Sky and British cycling in general can be forgiven for pinching themselves. Two British cyclists sit first and third in the standings of the Tour de France.

When Brailsford made his famously bold statement about winning the Tour with a British cyclist within five years of Team Sky’s inception, it is unlikely that either of these men would be
thought of as riders likely to fulfil that particular prophecy. One was a
rouleur
more suited to the cobbles of the north or the boards of a velodrome; the other was a virtually unknown
African. It is to the eternal credit of both men that they were able to turn expectations upside down.

For once, they would even have a brief opportunity to savour their achievements, as tomorrow would be the first rest day of this race.

Cadel Evans splits the two on GC (General Classification), but he is nearly two minutes adrift of Wiggins now, and just a few seconds ahead of Froome.

‘I’m just really pleased with how I put the day together. Mentally, too,’ recounts the usually laconic winner at the finish. ‘At the moment it’s just relief and
pride in myself for doing that.’

The key for Wiggins is that he has beaten the champion and affirmed his race lead. The time gaps and permutations of what happens next haven’t yet filtered into his consciousness.
‘When I get back tonight, that’s when to start thinking about the context of how it fits into the whole Tour and everything. Numbers are being thrown around – you’ve got
this on Cadel, this on him – but at the moment it’s a lot to take in.’

Back inside mission command, the Big Black Bus, Wiggins considered his achievement and spoke to the Team Sky website: ‘We’re nine days into the Tour now and there were two tough
stages before today. Everyone was tired last night and you never know how you’re going to recover. Time trialling’s what I do best, though. I get into my zone, know exactly the routine
I have to go through during the stage and I felt great today. The minute I turned the first pedal stroke on the warm-up I felt fantastic so I knew I was on a good one.

‘This is what we’ve trained for. Sean was saying to me on the radio in the last 10km, “Think of all those hours, all those sacrifices you’ve made.” This is what
that was all for and that really motivated me. All the hard work during the winter, missing my children’s birthdays being on training camps and things. This is what it’s all for. These
moments.

‘I didn’t set out today for the stage win, it was a battle for the GC, but to get the stage win is a bonus and that’s fantastic as well.’

BRADLEY WIGGINS WANTED TO
get away from Cofidis after the Moreni affair. He needed somebody to be angry at, and it became the team. Though they
weren’t directly responsible for what had clearly been one old pro looking for a decent last payday’s actions, he felt that the team were the first line of defence against cheats and
should do more to stop riders cheating in Cofidis’s name. He found an ally in Bob Stapleton, the man running the Team High Road project.

High Road was a very modern concept of a team. A holding company which was Stapleton’s baby was set up to run a team on a certain budget. A sponsor would come in and foot that defined
bill. The sponsor could change from one season to the next, but the nucleus of the organisation would remain the same. They had been operating in this way as the T-Mobile squad for some time, with
Mark Cavendish making a name for himself as their exciting new sprinter. Unfortunately for Stapleton, the German backlash against doping, especially regarding the implication in Operación
Puerto of the wunderkind Jan Ullrich, led to T-Mobile giving up on cycling and withdrawing at the end of the season. It was a test for the High Road business model, but Stapleton’s approach
was sound and the team would carry on as they had planned to in 2008, becoming known for that year’s Tour de France by the name of their new sponsor, the outdoor clothing company
Columbia.