Bradley Wiggins E-Book

John Deering

• Herausgeber: Arena Sport
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 368

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Rising from an inner city background, abandoned by his pro cyclist father as a toddler, Bradley Wiggins became a prodigious talent. World Junior Champion, World Champion and Olympic Champion were all titles that came his way at a startlingly young age, but what he really wanted was success on the road. 'Wiggo's' reinvention on the path to becoming Britain's first Tour de France winner in over a hundred years of racing is one of sport's most uplifting and inspiring stories. In this captivating and insightful narrative, Wiggins' old friend and colleague John Deering sets this remarkable story against the backdrop of Wiggins' crushing Tour victory, his races along the thousands of kilometres of French tarmac, telling the tale of his brutal procession from Liege to Paris in counterpoint to his fascinating life. From a Kilburn council estate to the Champs Elysees via the Olympics, Paul Weller and the world's most glorious sideburns, the legend of Bradley Wiggins is unravelled like never before.

Leseprobe

Bradley Wiggins:

Tour de Force

A Note on the Author

JOHN DEERING was born in Fulham in 1967. He has lived in Middlesex, Oxfordshire, Essex, Surrey, Toulouse and Edinburgh. He is the author of Team on the Run: The Inside Story of the Linda McCartney Cycling Team and 12 Months in the Saddle, and is a regular contributor to Ride Cycling Review. He lives in Richmond-upon-Thames with his Giant Defy Advanced.

This eBook edition published in 2013 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QSwww.birlinn.co.uk

This edition first published in Great Britain in 2013 by Arena Sport an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

ISBN 978 1 78027 129 3 eBook ISBN 978 0 85790 532 1

Copyright © John Deering, 2012

The right of John Deering to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

The author has made every effort to clear all copyright permissions, but where this has not been possible and amendments are required, the publisher will be pleased to make any necessary arrangements at the earliest opportunity.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

This book is for Brad.

For always being Brad.

Contents

Prologue: Liège

Saturday, 30 June 2012

Stage 1: Liège–Seraing, 198km

Sunday, 1 July 2012

Stage 2: Visé–Tournai, 207.5km

Monday, 2 July 2012

Stage 3: Orchies–Boulogne-sur-Mer, 197km

Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Stage 4: Abbeville–Rouen, 214.5km

Wednesday, 4 July 2012

Stage 5: Rouen–Saint Quentin, 196.5km

Thursday, 5 July 2012

Stage 6: Épernay–Metz, 207.5km

Friday, 6 July 2012

Stage 7: Tomblaine–La Planche des Belles Filles, 199km

Saturday, 7 July 2012

Stage 8: Belfort–Porrentruy, 157.5km

Sunday, 8 July 2012

Stage 9: Arc-et-Senans–Besançon, Time Trial, 41.5km

Monday, 9 July 2012

Stage 10: Mâcon–Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, 194.5km

Wednesday, 11 July 2012

Stage 11: Albertville–La Toussuire, 148km

Thursday, 12 July 2012

Stage 12: Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne–Annonay Davézieux, 226km

Friday, 13 July 2012

Stage 13: Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux–Le Cap d’Agde, 217km

Saturday, 14 July 2012

Stage 14: Limoux–Foix, 191km

Sunday, 15 July 2012

Stage 15: Samatan–Pau, 158.5km

Monday, 16 July 2012

Stage 16: Pau–Bagnères-de-Luchon, 197km

Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Stage 17: Bagnères-de-Luchon–Peyragudes, 143.5km

Thursday, 19 July 2012

Stage 18: Blagnac–Brive-la-Gaillarde, 222.5km

Friday, 20 July 2012

Stage 19: Bonneval–Chartres, Time Trial, 53.5km

Saturday, 21 July 2012

Stage 20: Rambouillet–Paris, 120km

Sunday, 22 July 2012

Epilogue: Hampton Court

Wednesday, 1 August 2012

PROLOGUE:

Liège

Saturday, 30 June 2012

It’s approaching seven minutes past five on Saturday, 30 June 2012. The 188th rider to begin this year’s Tour de France is inhaling deeply in the small start house that will fire him on his way towards Paris. There may be 3,500km to go, 90 hours of saddle time, the Alps, the Pyrenees, a defending champion to conquer and he may have finished no higher than fourth in this race before and only ever finished it three times, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the 188th starter is the favourite to win. He’s British, too. His name is Bradley Marc Wiggins OBE.

We’re in Liège. Not France – Belgium. The Tour de France makes regular sorties beyond its natural borders (notably for the start), usually every two years or so. In 2007, Bradley stood in a similar Tour de France start house waiting for his moment to begin, but in his home city of London. As the reigning World and Olympic Pursuit Champion, the short-time trial format of the prologue made him a big favourite to take the first yellow jersey of the race and Brad’s first stage win in the Tour de France. On that day, home expectation got the better of him and he was beaten into fourth place by one of his opponents today, Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara. But that was 2007, when Brad’s sole aim was that short sprint around the streets of Westminster. Today he has bigger fish to fry. He wants to win the Tour de France.

Behind the mirrored mask of his aero helmet visor, Brad closes his eyes and visualises the course in front of him, the corners and the bends. He knows that the Tour de France lasts three weeks and can’t be won on any one day, but it can be lost in the blink of an eye. Last year he found himself in a ditch with a broken collarbone after a week’s racing. His predecessor as World and Olympic Pursuit Champion and British Tour hope, Chris Boardman, hadn’t even made it through the 1995 prologue when a horrific crash in storm-battered Brittany ruled him out with a shattered ankle after just a few minutes of the prescribed three weeks.

It would be nice to win today, but far from essential. Laying down a marker to his rivals before the race has begun in earnest would be a good thing, but would also raise a separate conundrum: will Brad’s Team Sky want to defend the yellow jersey that he will wear as winner of the prologue for twenty more stages? Especially as they are here with the stated second objective of helping his teammate, World Champion Mark Cavendish, to win as many stages as possible. The number one priority is to get around safely without losing any time to his most significant rivals: Cadel Evans, Vincenzo Nibali, Jurgen Van Den Broeck, Denis Menchov. There is a queue of suitors for the final yellow jersey in Paris.

It’s a fine day, with no showers, high winds or thunderstorms to worry about. French time trial champion Sylvain Chavanel has held the best time since earlier this afternoon. The first serious challenger to his position is the TT specialist Tony Martin of Germany. Wearing a white skinsuit emblazoned with the rainbow bands that tell everybody he is indeed the champion of the world in this discipline, Martin certainly looks the part and sets a furious tempo around the boulevards alongside the river Meuse. Misfortune awaits him though, and his low-profile carbon time trial bike has to be replaced just after the halfway point in the 6.4km race when he picks up a puncture. He gets a superfast bike change from his Omega mechanic in the following car, but you can’t change bikes and win prologues when they’re this short. The World Champion will end up sixteen seconds behind Chavanel, near enough to feel that he could have won if his luck had been in.

Jurgen Van Den Broeck, a true threat in the mountains to come, although not one in short bursts against the clock as today, rolls down the start ramp and takes to the road. It’s time for Bradley to step up. Breathing deeply and smoothly, intent on the road ahead, his red sideburns peeking out from below the billiard ball Team Sky aero helmet, he knows that the waiting is over at last. Every day since last year’s heartbreaking crash on the road to Châteauroux, Brad has been dreaming of this day, the chance to put it all right. All the training, all the racing, all the famous victories he has already strung together this season point to today in Liège. The starter raises his hand to count off the seconds. A few more deep breaths and Brad sets his jaw. Time to stand up and be counted. He’s off.

The route heads along the Meuse, often doubling back on itself to head down the opposing carriageway. Though an all-out effort is required for a shot at victory, control and caution are needed at the corners, often full 180-degree turnabouts. Brad’s awareness of his power output and what he needs to deliver to win is acute, but he also knows that his Pinarello time trial machine is a weapon built for speed in straight lines, not for zipping around city streets. He blasts along the wide boulevards but slows carefully for the tight angles, warned continuously by the calm voice in his ear, his directeur sportif (DS) Sean Yates in the car behind. Together they have been over this course many times in the past few days of preparation.

Brad is in tenth place at the first time check. Has he kept something under the bonnet? It appears that he has. The long sweeping roads of the second half of this short race see the Brit begin to open the throttle. His long illustrious history in track pursuiting has left him with an almost preternatural ability to time and judge his effort. World Junior Champion at just seventeen years of age and later World Champion at the same event no fewer than three times, Brad knows how to keep his effort steady and increase the pace relentlessly as he closes on the line.

He plunges down the boulevard d’Avroy and breaks the beam on the finish line fractions of a second quicker than the long-time leader Chavanel who smiles ruefully at his luck. It’s now Brad’s turn to wait. Just about to leave the start house a short distance away is Mr Prologue himself, Fabian Cancellara. The Swiss has brought home the prologue bacon no fewer than four times in the Tour de France, the first time being in this very city in 2004 when he consigned Lance Armstrong in his pomp to a shock defeat. The rumours among the press band in Liège were that Spartacus was on the way out, his legs not what they were, his collarbone still uncomfortable since his heavy crash in the Tour of Flanders in April, and younger riders were ready to grab his crown.

Perhaps they were a little hasty. Cancellara, despite the top ten riders home being separated by a mere handful of seconds, astonishingly thumps seven seconds into Wiggins in second. Tour de France prologue number five is his, and so is that coveted first yellow jersey.

Bradley Wiggins is quietly satisfied. He has taken a little time from every one of his rivals for the overall victory and saved his team from the effort of a fraught first week protecting the yellow jersey. He hasn’t won the battle, but in the first skirmish in the war of the Tour de France 2012, he has put fear into the hearts of his enemies.

‘I’m really calm, really relaxed. I keep taking myself back to reality by putting my headphones on and just taking myself out of this madness, because this isn’t reality at the moment. It’d be very easy to get drawn into all this,’ says Brad after his iPod-soundtracked warmdown on the rollers as he attempts to brush off the chaos that is always attendant around team buses at the Tour. ‘Bit of Otis Redding.’

STAGE 1:

Liège–Seraing, 198km

Sunday, 1 July 2012

Sky like to do things differently.

Dave Brailsford transformed British track cycling through using professional training methods and preparation, and leaving nothing to chance. His GB national set-up reached its zenith at the 2012 Olympics when they grabbed seven of the ten gold medals on offer.

Brailsford had long dreamed of transferring the success of the track squad to the road. He knew as well as anybody that success in the velodrome meant Olympic success and huge national pride, but in cycling it’s the road that matters. In 2007 he began to talk openly about establishing a pro road set-up, somewhere that the track prodigies coming through the national system could aim their sights. Riders like Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish and Geraint Thomas had all been key members of the track performance programme, but all of their ultimate goals lay on the tarmac of Europe. What if Brailsford could build an umbrella organisation to keep these talents together? It would have to be a British team with a British sponsor, a national team for the country to unite behind in a way that had never happened in cycling before.

The 2007 Tour de France, after the amazing weekend in London that kicked it off, developed into one of the most exciting contests in the long history of the race. A stick-thin pale Danish boy called Michael Rasmussen and a prodigiously talented Spanish rider by the name of Alberto Contador knocked seven bells out of each other every time the course headed uphill. It was riveting viewing, and many man-hours were lost as bike fans the world over bunked off work to follow the daily drama. The battle royal raged across France with the combatants drawing on superhuman exertion to put one over each other.

But Rasmussen’s efforts were indeed superhuman. His challenge unravelled as a trail of missed drugs tests and a sorry story of ‘vampire’ dodging, during which he led the UCI testers a merry dance as they attempted to pin him down, saw him thrown off the race. The reputation of the Tour and the sport itself was once again swimming in detritus at the bottom of the world’s dirtiest sink. In fact, make that the world’s least appealing urinal, as double stage winner Alexandre Vinokourov went out the same exit door of shame after brazenly cheating the blood doping regulations.

With the French press gloomily announcing ‘le mort du Tour’ and the legacy of dozens of sordid tales of doping, cheating, lying and subterfuge littering the sport’s recent history, this was one of cycling’s lowest moments. It certainly felt that way to those fans who had been avoiding the morning commute to cheer on their heroes. Heroes with feet of clay, it now seemed. Even Bradley Wiggins, a frequent and outspoken critic of doping, found himself drawn into the 2007 mess when his teammate on the French Cofidis squad, Cristian Moreni, tested positive for testosterone. The hormone is known as ‘the idiot’s drug’ in cycling due to the strong chance of you being caught if you abuse it. The whole team were removed from the race, showing that even the most vehement of protesters can find himself tarred with a great big dirty brush.

How would Dave Brailsford be able to put his master plan into action against this tawdry backdrop? He faced the issue head on, talking about providing an antidote to the constant negative stories – ‘the doom and gloom’ as he called it. The garlanded cycling writer Richard Moore would even later mischievously suggest that Brailsford was perhaps using ‘the logic of the property market: buy when prices are low’.

As it happened, in the end, the deal almost came to Brailsford rather than him chasing down the cash in the traditional way of these things. Sky, the Murdoch empire’s broadcasting giant, were looking for a sport in which to get involved – a sport they could own publicity-wise, a sport that worked on a myriad of different levels from children’s participation through family leisure pursuits via fitness fanatics to the best professional outfit in the game. Sponsors have a closer relationship with their teams in cycling than any other sport. Steven Gerrard doesn’t play for Carlsberg, he plays for Liverpool. Lewis Hamilton doesn’t drive for Santander, he drives for McLaren. But Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish, in 2012 at least, ride for Sky. There’s value in that.

In fact, even more value than you might think. Sky, under the aegis of BSkyB, the operating company, directly paid £6m towards the running of the team in 2011, the last year for which figures are available at the time of writing. This came out of the company’s marketing budget, which was, for the same period, wait for it, £1.2bn. OK, we don’t know the costs for 2012, and expensive arrivals like Mark Cavendish don’t come cheap, however, the transfer costs incurred by the team when buying Wiggins, among others, out of his previous contract, will have disappeared. So, let’s just suppose for a minute that BSkyB put in the same amount of money in 2012 as they did in 2011. That means the entire publicity attained by the team in this glory-soaked season accounts for just 0.5% of their total marketing spend. That sounds like the sort of value most people can appreciate.

It sounded very much like a match made in heaven.

*

In the spirit of doing things differently, Sky had given themselves what Brailsford would call a ‘nice problem to have’. When the team was eventually launched at the beginning of the 2010 season, he talked confidently of producing a ‘British winner of the Tour de France within five years’. Gasps of amazement, even ridicule, were heard around the cycling world, but they were scared of Sky’s power. Ever since 2010, it had been clear that the man chosen to fill those intimidating shoes of destiny was Bradley Wiggins. Team Sky arrived in Liège on the last weekend in June 2012 with the avowed aim of delivering victory for Wiggins in Paris.

The ‘nice problem to have’ was Mark Cavendish. In the interests of building their British team and thus hiring the best British riders, they had spent years courting the fastest finisher in the sport, possibly the fastest ever finisher in the sport. The Manx rider came at a high price, but he also arrived as the World Champion, BBC Sports Personality of the Year and the winner of twenty stages of the Tour de France. The question was: could Team Sky deliver on both fronts? Could they guide Wiggins to overall victory and simultaneously lead Cavendish to the stage wins they had signed him for? Could they support Cav’s bid to win the points jersey while Wiggins fought for the biggest prize? Wiggo in yellow and Cav in green?

There was a precedent. In 1996, the German T-Mobile team had managed to win the race with Bjarne Riis, take second place with the emerging Jan Ullrich and the green points jersey for the speedy Erik Zabel. Zabel had become a confidant of Cavendish in recent years, guiding the young Brit when he first entered the world of Tour de France sprinting at that same T-Mobile set-up. However, things had been different for Cavendish at the various incarnations of the High Road/HTC/Columbia team from which he arrived at Team Sky. There, he was king of the castle. Da man. They surrounded him with powerful domestiques like Bernie Eisel and race-proven sprinters in themselves like Matt Goss and Mark Renshaw whose sole purpose was to get the Manx Missile to the finish line in the right place to do his thang. And his thang invariably involved a big grin and a victory salute. How would they cope with those demands and the need to control the race for Brad? Would they be able to sit on the front all day to dissuade attacks, chase down escapees, keep Wiggins out of the wind, line out the bunch in the high mountains, protect a potential yellow jersey for many days on end and produce a high-speed train to lead out Cavendish? It was a tall order. Perhaps Cav would revert to his early-career style of joining the trains of other sprinters’ teams as they pounded towards the line in tight formation before popping round them cheekily to take the victory for himself? A young prodigy might get away with that for a season in his youth, but the World Champion at the world’s biggest team would make himself few friends. And you need friends in bike racing or bad things start to happen.

Stage 1, from Liège to Seraing, would help us find out.

*

Fabian Cancellara looks good in yellow. Five prologue wins have delivered him plenty of days in the maillot jaune over the years, and his power on the hard roads and fast stages of the Tour’s first week have often kept him in the front of the race until it meets the mountains. The Swiss hero loves racing in Belgium and northern France, too, as his dominating victories in the Tour of Flanders and Paris–Roubaix have proved. His grin tops the yellow jersey with pride as the Tour rolls out en masse for the first time.

Bike racing has changed considerably in the last few years. In the old days, races would be packed with lengthy stages that would begin at a leisurely pace before rocketing through the final hour at a furious speed as the sprinters’ teams vied for supremacy in the final shakedown. These days, bizarrely, the fastest hour is often the first. This is because, with stage wins at such a premium, everybody is keen to get in ‘the break’. Not a break, but the break. The second the commissaire’s flag is withdrawn inside the red car at the front to signify that neutralisation is over and racing can begin, riders begin firing themselves out of the bunch and haring off up the road. The peloton, filled as it is with other riders who want to be in the break, quickly accelerates to breakneck speeds to bring them back. There are plenty of riders here who have no hope of winning the overall prize and no hope of winning sprint stages, who will lose out in the time trials and get destroyed in the mountains. What they crave is the chance of a stage victory, getting themselves into a tasty little move, outrunning the bunch and outfoxing their breakaway companions to taste Tour glory. They will also be doing their hard-pressed teammates a favour, as they can relax in the bosom of the bunch, safe in the knowledge that their buddy up the road will save them from a day killing themselves at the front to bring it all back.

Liège on Stage 1 is no different to this pattern, and Cancellara’s RadioShack-Nissan team ride tempo while various hopefuls launch themselves towards Seraing. Those trying to digest their generous breakfasts in the crowd behind are delighted when things calm down a little sooner than is often the case and the break forms. Six riders, no famous names, no danger to those with their eye on ultimate glory. After a few moments of jousting with the sextet a handful of yards in front of them, the peloton relents and they gather themselves for a few minutes, Cancellara’s men ensuring it doesn’t get silly and jeopardise his yellow jersey.

This morning in the Team Sky bus, Sean Yates had laid out the day’s priorities:

No crashes.

Keep Brad safe.

Put a rider in the break.

Keep the race together in the final stages for Cav.

Lead out Cav.

Give Edvald Boasson Hagen free rein.

The first week of the Tour de France is a dangerous place to be. People fall off. Dreams are shattered. The best laid plans of mice and bike riders et cetera. When Wiggins hit the deck, resplendent in his newly acquired GB Champion’s jersey twelve months ago, it was the death of a million hopes for British bike fans, not to mention the man himself, his team and his family. Crashes happen, but there are things that can be done. It’s safer to ride near the front. It’s better to have your teammates around. And it’s good if it’s not raining.

If there’s a rider from Team Sky in the break, less work is required from his teammates to chase things down. It’s also an opportunity to win a stage if the move stays clear, or even a chance to take yellow when time gaps are so narrow at this early stage in the overall competition.

Cav’s requirements become more accentuated the nearer we get to the finish. If he’s in there, he’s trusted to win. He’s the fastest man here out of the 200-odd riders competing. If the team can bring him through, they will.

Edvald Boasson Hagen, champion of Norway, is a popular man at Team Sky. Blessed with immense strength, he has the ability to blast his way to victory on hard days. His overall hopes are hampered by his difficulties in the high mountains, but he is a wild card, a quality accessory that any team would be glad to have. Let him go his own way.

The crashes have begun. First to hit the deck is Tony Martin, his run of bad luck continuing after a puncture robbed him of a big shout in yesterday’s prologue. He carries on with a battered wrist, lacerated elbow and sour demeanour.

Team Sky regroup around their leader and settle in for the long haul, taking it in turns to make sorties back to Yates’s car and return with bottles. It’s a showery day, and as the pace picks up towards the day’s dénouement, things become increasingly fraught. The six escapees show no desire to be caught, and though the RadioShack-Nissan-powered peloton closes the gap to a minute with 30km left to ride, they grit their teeth and press on gamely.

The dreaded shout of ‘Chute dans le peloton!’ crackles Yates’s radio, and he cranes his neck round the cars and riders in front to see who has gone down. Luis Leon Sanchez from Rabobank is hurt . . . a couple of Spanish guys . . . oh shit, a Team Sky jersey. It’s his trusted road captain, Australia’s Mick Rogers. Vastly experienced and a former contender himself, Rogers is Yates’s eyes and ears in the bunch. He is bumped and bruised but uninjured. Yates lets out a breath he has been holding for some time and chases after the race, now closing inexorably on the six men in front and the finish in Seraing.

Cavendish moves up under the patronage of his minder Bernie Eisel. Eisel arrived at Team Sky from HTC with Cavendish and has been at his side unstintingly for the last couple of years.

The big danger to the pure sprinters – Cavendish, Greipel, Farrar, Petacchi – is the siting of a nasty little hill within the finishing town of Seraing. It’s clear that several riders have this in mind, and the pace reaches crazy levels as the escapees are finally gobbled up and those with aspirations push on. There is a huge roar from the crowds beneath the finish line’s big screens as the yellow jersey himself, Spartacus, Fabian Cancellara launches a searing move with just 1,500m to go. He tears the field apart with the burst, but two men just manage to hang on to him: powerful Slovak Peter Sagan and our own Edvald Boasson Hagen. Unable to rest lest they be reeled in by the desperate bunch, Cancellara opens the sprint, but he’s easily overhauled by a blistering burst from Sagan who has time to pull off a dancing victory salute as he crosses the line. Edvald is third. A powerful performance but not at the level of Sagan. Cancellara has lost the stage but retained the jersey and his famous grin.

What of Cavendish? Like the other pure sprinters, the speed and the severity of the final short climb was too much for him to be in a position to compete and he saved his finish for the following day, rolling in among the main field in 128th place.

Wiggins, however, has had a first stage to remember. Having avoided the mishaps that have split the bunch at times, including the spill that put his captain Mick Rogers on the deck alongside him, Bradley has stayed calm, maintained his position in the bunch and, despite not having designs on stage victory, positively flew up the last climb to take an excellent sixteenth spot on the stage alongside his main rivals Evans and Nibali. He will look them in the eye tonight and say, ‘I’m coming for you.’

PEOPLE ALWAYS WANT TO talk about Bradley’s dad, but it’s his mum they should be talking about.

Linda was a seventeen-year-old local girl with a love of bike racing when she met Garry Wiggins near her home in West London. She was a regular at the local track and her pretty blonde looks and independent nature soon brought her to the attention of the attractively cavalier Australian rider who was one of the more impressive guys to be seen on the Paddington track. He hit on her, she hit on him back and she found herself with a rather exciting and rakish boyfriend five years her senior.

Garry had arrived from provincial Victoria with a bike, a few Aussie dollars, and a burning ambition to make a name for himself in European cycling. He bullied his way on to what was then a thriving track scene, using his skill, his power and his fists when necessary.

In 1979, Linda married Garry and they decided to set up home in Belgium to further Garry’s racing career. His plans lay not on the road but on the lucrative six-day circuit. The six-day is a popular niche event in some areas today, but it was big news in the 1970s and 1980s. A circus of riders would move from town to town and set up shop in an arena for a week where they would ride either on the boards of a permanent track or one constructed for the occasion. There was an annual event at Wembley Arena, or Empire Pool as it was then known, called the Skol Six. The gloriously named event brings back images of cheap beer sloshing around in plastic glasses and men hurling encouragement and abuse at sportsmen while scarcely noticing what is going on. A bit like Saturday afternoon in the Tavern at the Lord’s Test.

The riders would perform in pairs over six nights of racing, riding a form of tag-team racing called the madison after Madison Square Garden in New York, where the discipline had developed. Effectively, only one of the pair is racing. The other tends to roll around the top of the banking out of the way. When his teammate is flagging, he hurls his fresher partner into the action with a handsling. One of cycling’s more dangerous stunts, the handsling, along with the harem-scarem nature of the random tags going on at any moment, makes the madison extremely exciting to watch, but hard to follow. Hence the booze and the hollering hordes.

Garry Wiggins was pretty good at it. From the Wiggins’s little apartment in Ghent he would race most days in the summer, competing in the small circuit races known as kermesses that each small town staged on its local roads. Then in the winter it would be on to the tracks of the six-day ring in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Switzerland, and a chance to earn some proper money.

It was into this strange world that Bradley Marc Wiggins arrived on 28 April 1980. Unlike anything that happens at Team Sky these days, in 1980, Bradley was very much Not Part Of The Plan. Garry had already managed to leave one family behind in his life – a wife and daughter from a teenage marriage in Australia – and now the second one was coming under some pressure. Amphetamine use was rife in those long days and nights of sustained racing and the lack of proper doping controls meant that riders were often looking for the other type of speed to get them through their working weeks. Garry filled that need for himself and plenty of others by being the go-to man in Ghent if you needed a helping hand with what cyclists have always euphemistically termed medication. According to Brad himself, writing in his excellent 2009 autobiography In Pursuit of Glory, after a family visit to Australia, Garry smuggled back a whole bunch of amphetamines in his baby’s nappy. That must make Brad the youngest drug offender on the cycling circuit by some distance.

Amphetamines, booze, a hard man’s nature and a temper. It must have been pretty tough for Linda, struggling to look after a baby at her young age in a small apartment in a foreign country. People are often mistaken that being in Belgium, a dual-language country, means that people speak both French and Flemish. In fact, it’s much more like England and Wales: you wouldn’t expect to walk into a supermarket in Norwich and be understood if you asked for your lottery ticket and 20 Marlboro Lights in Welsh. That’s Belgium. Wallonia in the south is pure French; Flanders in the north is all guttural Flemish, a language that has been described as sounding like a rural version of Dutch. Linda’s French lessons from school weren’t very useful for integrating into Ghent society. A drunken, angry and sometimes violent husband was the last thing she and her baby needed.

The couple struggled through to Christmas 1982, fighting, breaking up and reuniting regularly, until Garry didn’t turn up in England as planned for a family Christmas. He’d decided to spend it with his new girlfriend instead. That was it as far as his attempt at happy families went.

A child’s bike turned up on Brad’s third birthday, but that was the only thing he or Linda got out of the itinerant elder Wiggins for the rest of the boy’s childhood. And Linda certainly didn’t miss the black eyes.

Linda’s parents, George and Maureen, were a godsend. While she worked around the clock to provide for her young boy, his grandparents did all they possibly could to help and support her. She moved back home – even though her two sisters were still there – and the family dug in and helped each other out. It wasn’t long before the hard-working young mum had grafted her way into a proper flat for herself and her toddler, within walking distance of the old place in Paddington.

Granddad George was Bradley’s constant companion in those early days. Sport ran through George like working-class blood, but the sports he took Brad to week in, week out during those formative years were far removed from the Tour de France. For racing and excitement, it wasn’t the velodrome, it was the greyhound tracks of London; and for guile and craft it was snooker and darts in the British Legion.

Linda unsurprisingly found herself a new man, despite not having much time for looking with her long hours and her inquisitive schoolboy running around her skirts at every other moment. Brendan was a thoroughly decent guy who respected and nurtured Bradley through his school years, and he and Brad’s mother also gave the boy a brother, too, Ryan, seven years Brad’s junior.

Bradley Wiggins was a typically bright London schoolboy, popular enough at school, well loved at home, playing football in the streets and parks with his mates, getting in and out of the odd scrape but nothing to write home about. Where was the genesis of the Tour de France hero? How did this gangly smiling kid become a World Champion and Olympic gold medallist?

STAGE 2:

Visé–Tournai, 207.5km

Monday, 2 July 2012

Each team in the Tour de France is made up of nine riders. The designated leader of the team wears a number ending in one, hence Bradley Wiggins’s 101. Each of the riders has a specific role. Team Sky is as follows:

101: Bradley Wiggins. The leader. The man. The one. The reason we’re all here. Fourth in this race three years ago, he revealed his potential. His first Tour with Team Sky was also Team Sky’s first Tour and it proved to be a steep learning curve for both parties. In 2011 he arrived in great form with an improved team but was an early crash victim. This year he starts as the favourite to win the race.

102: Edvald Boasson Hagen. The wild card. A massive talent, champion of Norway, he’s at his best in the long hard classics and a powerful hitter with a chance to pull off a win on any given day. Licence to seek out stage wins without any specific assisting role but will be expected to provide pace and effort to aid the team effort when required.

103: Mark Cavendish. The fastest man in the world. The World Champion. The quickest sprinter in this, or any race, and the most prolific stage winner riding. Still only 27 and already the winner of twenty stages. Here to add to those, but unsure of how much support he can rely on from a team committed to winning the overall prize.

104: Bernie Eisel. Cav’s right-hand man. Mark Cavendish brought his trusty lieutenant with him to Team Sky from the engine room of their HTC squad after plundering Tour wins together for years. The motor-mouthed Austrian is a massively popular member of the team and expected to single-handedly do the job a whole team did last year and lead Cav out.

105: Chris Froome. The secret weapon. The African-bred Brit climbed to a completely unpredicted second place in last year’s Vuelta a España, as good as any result by a British cyclist in a grand tour in the history of cycling. Here, his job is to accompany Wiggins every step of the way in the mountains, and provide a Plan B if the sideburned Plan A doesn’t pan out.

106: Christian Knees. The horse. Sean Yates would never want to take an army into battle without at least one man to do his old job. Get on the front. Raise the tempo. Close things down. Put some hurt on. With a man like Knees on the front, the others can take a break, knowing the lanky German will do the work of ten men if necessary.

107: Richie Porte. The class act. The young Australian has carried out his apprenticeship alongside Alberto Contador at Saxo Bank and is ready to become the hitter he has always promised to be. Strong in the time trial and when things curve uphill, he has all the attributes to be a leader of a grand tour team himself. This year, he is one of those whom Wiggins will look to lean on in the Alps and Pyrenees, and a possible Plan C.

108: Mick Rogers. The captain. Three times the World Time Trial Champion, the 32-year-old from New South Wales has always been known for his wise head. Briefly a contender himself when leading the T-Mobile and HTC squads, his role as decision-maker on the road for Wiggins and the rest sits comfortably on his experienced shoulders. Will be expected to be one of the pace-setters on the lower slopes of the big climbs.

109: Kanstantsin Siutsou. The pro. The Belarusian has been on the scene since becoming World Under-23 Champion in 2004, picking up stage wins and overall places in the grand tours ever since. Impressed Team Sky while at HTC last year when his prodigious climbing dragged Wiggins back up to Evans and Vinokourov in the Dauphiné Libéré when the Brit was in danger of losing the lead. Will form part of a powerful climbing phalanx with Froome, Porte and Rogers to fight for Wiggins in the mountains.

*

The route from Visé to Tournai is a flat rush over 200-odd kilometres of bleak Flanders lowland. The day will be characterised by the non-sprinters trying to escape the bunch and the sprinters’ teams trying to pull them back and set up a sprint. Therefore, there are two guarantees about today’s racing: it will be really fast, and it will be dangerous.

Team Sky will want to win today. Mark Cavendish will really want to win. This is the sort of day that will probably be known by future generations as a Cav Day, a day where it feels that whatever anyone does, there is only going to be one winner. Flat sprint stages often have this feel of inevitability after they’ve finished, but in the heat of battle it’s clear that, in truth, anything can and probably will happen.

The teams that have come to this race with hopes of a sprint victory are:

Orica-GreenEDGE. The newly formed Australian team is built on the Team Sky blueprint, using a well-established national track programme as a springboard for road success. For now, though, they lack a leader to challenge for the overall prize. They are here to look for opportunistic stage wins through the likes of adventurers like Simon Gerrans, old stager Stuart O’Grady, and their most successful rider of the spring, Michael Albasini. But they also have a tasty fast man: Matt Goss. No, not that guy out of Bros, the one who has been leading out Cav at HTC for a couple of years.

Lotto Belisol. The Belgian-based classics team have Mark Cavendish’s greatest rival in their sprint plans, the speedy German André Greipel. No love is lost between these two, with Greipel having to play second fiddle to Cavendish at various team incarnations for much of his early career. The German believes that he can beat Cavendish, that he can beat the World Champion in a straight mano-a-mano battle and, sometimes, he can. But not often.

Liquigas-Cannondale. The Italians have discovered a rare talent in yesterday’s stage winner and early wearer of the green jersey for most consistent finisher, Peter Sagan. Though Cavendish has greater pure speed than the Slovakian arriviste, Sagan’s ability to score on all sorts of terrain makes him a formidable obstacle if the green jersey is to go back to the Isle of Man like last year.

Lampre-ISD. Alessandro Petacchi used to be really fast, one of the few men to give Mario Cipollini a regular hiding when the Lion King was at his peak. The key phrase here is ‘used to be’. One wonders why they bother with all the chasing and the leading out when Petacchi is clearly devoid of the oomph he once displayed on a daily basis.

Garmin-Sharp. Despite contesting Tour de France sprint finishes for many years, Tyler Farrar boasts a grand total of one stage win versus his contemporary Cavendish’s twenty. Still, Garmin-Sharp gamely do their bit and lead him out every time, surely more in hope than expectation.

These are the main players in the last 20km of a flat stage, as they fight to keep the race together and position their designated strikers for the final dash to the line.

Today, everybody from Team Sky remains upright, the best feeling of all for Dave Brailsford, who knows that for all his talk of attention to detail and marginal gains, no amount of preparation can fix a problem like last year’s withdrawal of their leader after kissing the tarmac at high speed.

Into the last 20km and Edvald Boasson Hagen and Mark Cavendish are in the mix for Team Sky, but there is no sign of a long train of teammates leading out the Manx Missile as would have been expected if this were 2011 and he was wearing the white jersey of HTC. Instead, the two Team Sky riders wearing white jerseys – Cav’s with the rainbow bands of World Champion and Boasson Hagen’s with the Norwegian flag as national title-holder – are fighting for themselves to hold their places near the front of the breathtakingly fast peloton as it snakes towards Tournai across the battlefields of the Great War. Team Sky have revived a long-forgotten Tour tradition denoting the leading team on overall classification by donning yellow headwear. Evoking memories of Anquetil or Merckx and their teammates in yellow cotton caps, the Team Sky riders are wearing helmets in the same colour as Cancellara’s leader’s jersey. It is an unfamiliar look, but it makes it easier to pick out Boasson Hagen and Cav as they jockey in the speeding pack.

Lotto Belisol are dominant, a full train of riders pumping their legs in harmony like the Mallard hauling an express train at record speed. Greipel is in pole position as they head under the red kite that signifies the last kilometre. Sagan is crouching his big frame to stay on the German’s wheel, hoping to be able to blast away from him like Chris Hoy on the track when they approach the line. Cav is further back, without conspicuous teammates, but following the experienced Óscar Freire. ‘I knew that there was some headwind and it was clear to me that I could also have a chance if I started from a bit further back,’ explained Cavendish regarding his positioning. ‘I knew Freire always goes up in the last kilometre so I stayed with him.’