Bradley Wiggins (17 page)

As Froome nears Nibali’s back wheel, the intense effort catches up with him and Wiggins pushes through to complete the recapture of the Italian himself. As the attack is finally snuffed
out, the race eases imperceptibly, allowing Froome to regain the group.

Knowing that Evans is struggling behind, the group look to extend their advantage over him and the attacks keep coming. It is when countering one of these moves that Chris Froome kicks over the
can of worms that will come to dominate the rest of this race. He shoots clear of his companions with a breathtaking kick that hurts everybody, his leader Wiggins included. He has covered no more
than 100m more when he is seen talking into the mic attached to his jersey and sitting up, looking behind. He is clearly in touch with Sean Yates in the following car, and though the wording of the
message he has received remains between them, the sentiment from Yates is clear: Don’t you dare. Wait.

The loyal Froome does exactly that, rejoined by the yellow jersey seconds later. There’s no question that it has been an uncomfortable moment for Wiggins. Was he attacked by his teammate?
Was Froome just forcing the pace to increase the pressure on Nibali and Van Den Broeck? Was Froome just maximising the distance to Evans?

With only Rolland from the day’s break ahead of them, the yellow jersey group at the finish consists of just Pinot, Froome, Van Den Broeck, Nibali and Wiggins.

Team Sky now hold first and second place overall, Froome having clambered over Evans in the standings. The Australian is now a distant fourth behind Vincenzo Nibali, 3’19” behind
Bradley Wiggins.

The outcome could scarcely be better for Team Sky, but all the talk at La Toussuire is about Froome’s ‘attack’ and a possible rivalry between the first- and second- placed
teammates.

Amid the frantic speculation, cyclingnews.com’s Peter Cossins summed up the situation calmly and accurately: ‘There is no avoiding the conclusion that the rider most capable of
toppling Wiggins is riding in the same team.’

B
RADLEY WIGGINS HAD HIGH
hopes for 2009. He managed to steady himself after the Beijing Olympics – he still enjoyed his fair share of parties,
nights out and invitations to functions, but he was back in training a few months earlier than after his post-Athens blitz.

He was talking to the Garmin-Slipstream team about 2009. They were keen for him to express himself as a rider and properly fulfil his potential on the road, which they felt was something he was
a long way off doing so far. The road was to be Brad’s objective, for now at least, and further thoughts of Olympic glory on the track would be shelved until preparations for London 2012
needed discussing. The main topic of discussion was weight. The ideal weight for a track rider was generally slightly heavier than that of a roadman. While track performance was largely governed by
power output, the key factor in road success was the ratio of power to weight. A ten-stone rider will need less power to get over a hill than a twelve-stone rider, goes the equation. Brad and his
new Garmin-Slipstream team thought that he could lose the best part of a stone, as long as it was done carefully. Of course, he wasn’t exactly overweight, so the careful part of that equation
was crucial. It would need to be done with a careful mix of diet and training to avoid power and endurance ebbing away with that weight.

The season started with a very encouraging second to an unstoppable Alberto Contador in the Paris–Nice prologue, followed by good rides at Milan–San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and
Paris–Roubaix. Cav won in San Remo, still his best ride outside the Tour de France and World Championships, and Brad took top 30 placings in both of the hard northern classics he was
beginning to really enjoy riding. His third visit to the Giro d’Italia was something of a revelation, climbing being a much more comfortable experience for the slimmed-down 2009 version
Wiggo. He was tempted to open the throttle out and cane it on many occasions, but continually reminded himself that the battlefield of the Tour de France would be the decisive point of his year,
and held back accordingly. On the final day into Rome, with the family watching, he rode the perfect time trial and was surely destined for his greatest win as a professional until the weather
intervened. Heavy rain meant a whole bunch of treacherous cobbled corners in the final kilometres and he forced himself to back off the gas with the bigger prizes looming on the horizon. A crash
now simply wouldn’t do. Brad was second to the Lithuanian Ignatas Konovalovas, who had finished before the rain came down.

That disappointment aside, the Briton was flying and champing at the bit to start his third Tour de France.

The prologue was in Monaco and featured a tough climb and tricky descent. Wiggins put his money on Cancellara and Contador and wasn’t about to lose the bet. What was a bigger surprise to
the field was the identity of the rider in third place on the evening of the first Saturday in July: Bradley Wiggins. Some believed that he was only a prologue specialist fulfilling his brief, but
others sensed a new Wiggins. He looked thinner for starters, his gaunt face beginning to resemble a bird of prey, accentuating his roman nose into more of a beak in profile. The new Wiggins was
perhaps more of a raptor.

Garmin-Slipstream were very strong in the time trial, an event which the organisers had strategically placed in Stage 4 of that year’s Tour. With his high GC place from the prologue, a
stage-winning ride in the time trial from Garmin-Slipstream could conceivably put Brad in the lead. The yellow jersey! It seemed inconceivable, and would surely be a temporary tenure until Alberto,
Andy and Lance started slugging it out in the Pyrenees, but still . . .

It wasn’t to be. On that infamous third stage to La Grand Motte, Bradley was one of the field that got caught on the wrong side of the split when HTC forced the pace into the crosswinds
and the resulting lost seconds cost them the chance of a shot at yellow.

Garmin-Slipstream shrugged the disappointment aside and turned their attentions to that team time trial. With Brad, David Millar, Dave Zabriskie and Christian Vande Velde in their lineup, they
had an incredible array of testers. The trick would be coaxing the other riders through, or, at least one of them: in the team time trial, the time is taken on the fifth man to cross the line. They
were down to five early on after going out all guns blazing. The TV commentators thought they’d blown it, but the tactic was actually part of a plan, albeit a risky one. If that fifth rider,
future Giro winner Ryder Hesjedal, or one of the four main men were to drop off, all their effort would be wasted. In the end, they were only bested by the Astana unit of Contador and Armstrong,
who batted all the way down to nine in this discipline and brought the whole team home eighteen seconds ahead of Garmin-Slipstream. Four stages had gone, and Bradley was in sixth spot on the
GC.

It was expected that Brad would begin a long descent down the rankings the next day, when the Tour took in its first big mountain top finish, the long, long drag up to Arcalis in Andorra used by
Jan Ullrich to forge his sole Tour de France victory in 1997. But Bradley confounded the doubters by riding comfortably in the group of GC contenders all the way up the mountain, rubbing shoulders
with Armstrong and the Schlecks. Those commentators had failed to take in the nature of that climb: it’s long, all right, but without a proliferation of hairpins or steep ramps to break the
rhythm. If ever a big mountain climb could be said to suit Bradley Wiggins, it would be Arcalis. Only at the top, when Alberto Contador sprang away unchallenged to put some time into his rivals did
Brad lose sight of any of his opponents, but he wasn’t alone. Contador was clearly head and shoulders above the rest of this race, regardless of any mind-games his teammate Armstrong might
try. Brad was in the company of royalty, and people were beginning to notice.

A few days later, Alberto Contador was even paying him the compliment of telling the press that he would have to put time into Brad to avoid him being a danger to his yellow jersey in the late
time trial in Annecy.

Bradley Wiggins found himself riding into the Alps as a genuine podium contender. The first day was a yomp up to Verbier in Switzerland, with Contador and Schleck going head to head and dropping
the field before the classy Spaniard asserted himself upon the Luxembourger. Astonishingly, the new confident Bradley Wiggins took fifth place on the mountain, just over a minute behind the
imperious race leader. He was in third overall, a place behind a man who had finished 25 seconds after him at Verbier, a chap by the name of Lance Armstrong.

Suddenly, the cycling press weren’t asking when Wiggins would crack, but if he would at all. Contador, the consummate stage racer, wouldn’t be expected to lose his 1’46”
lead to Wiggins in the Annecy time trial, but it was not beyond the realms of possibility. Suddenly, the London track specialist was being spoken of as a potential Tour winner. It wasn’t a
cert, but it was definitely a possibility. They would have to shift him.

They had a damned good try at it on the next stage over the twin peaks of Grand and Petit Saint Bernard, when Andy Schleck shredded the field with a powerful attack. Only six men could stay with
the pace, but one of those was Bradley Wiggins. He stayed third in Bourg-Saint-Maurice at 1’46”.

The next day was another trial. There were only two opportunities for the climbers in the Tour de France to force their way into the reckoning: this stage to Le Grand-Bornan, and
Saturday’s sprawling epic to the summit of the Giant of Provence, Mont Ventoux. The Schlecks worked in tandem quite brilliantly, spread-eagling the entire field, with the notable exception of
the simply brilliant Contador, who matched them the whole way. In the end, it suited all three of them to some extent: Frank Schleck won the stage, Contador retained the jersey, and all three of
them saw Armstrong and Wiggins get bounced to give them sole occupancy of the podium places. Brad had slipped to sixth behind Contador, Andy, Frank, Lance and Andreas Klöden. It wasn’t
his best day, but he was proud of a stunning rearguard action that still left him in with a shout at a good finish. Coming into this race, his team had hopes of a top twenty finish for Brad, but
also thought highly of Zabriskie, Vande Velde and Millar’s chances. Now their weight was all behind Wiggins and he was still comfortably outstripping expectations in a dazzling sixth place
overall.

Despite Mont Ventoux looming on the distant horizon, Brad was quietly confident of improving his position. He was loving every minute of being a player on the big stage and the fatigue was
losing out to the excitement. He was strongly backing himself to bounce back in the time trial, feeling that he had ridden pretty well to Le Grand-Bornan and only been beaten by men he would always
expect to lose time to in the circumstances. He was going to control the controllables and concentrate on the time trial, his domain.

Garmin had reconnoitred the time trial course on the rest day and discovered it to be a bit harder than the race manual suggested. The hill was longer and steeper, not ideal for Brad, but he
would tackle it better prepared. A wind blew up during the course of the race, favouring the earlier starters. That meant a chance to shine for the time trial specialists who were low down on GC
and thus starting well before the hitters. Fabian Cancellara fell into this category, as did David Millar, and they were among the top five. Only one of the overall contenders was able to pierce
this block of testers: the man who would now certainly be crowned in Paris, the unsurpassable Alberto Contador. He was fastest of all, glorying in a stage win in the yellow jersey and proving
beyond doubt that he was the strongest rider in this race. Nearest to him of his rivals was indeed the confident resurgent Wiggins, sixth at 42 seconds, inside the times of everybody in front of
him on the overall standings save Contador. Klöden, Armstrong and both Schlecks all gave way to Garmin’s Londoner who went to bed in fourth spot that night with only Mont Ventoux
standing in his way.

The Tour de France organisers had played a blinder in keeping the podium places in question right up to the final weekend, and Bradley Wiggins was still a key player. What a Tour, what a
rider.

The history of cycling is littered with lurid stories of teammates in rivalry.

The uniqueness of cycling lies in it being a team sport with individual winners. There are plenty of sports where a band of brothers join together in an all-for-one-one-for-all blood pact to
overcome the obstacles placed in front of them, but those all end up with a team name engraved on the plinth around the base of a cup of some description; a City, a United, a Giants, a Lakers.
Cycling is the only sport that demands that a team of professionals perform at the very peak of their ability with no hope of receiving eternal fame except to bask in the distant reflected glow of
one of their number. It’s his name that the engraver etches into the silverware, not the team’s.