Bradley Wiggins (21 page)

‘I just thought it was the honourable thing to do to wait for Cadel. No one wants to benefit from someone else’s misfortune,’ he shrugs later.

This unwritten rule has had its fair share of action over the years in the Tour: Lance Armstrong waiting for Jan Ullrich after a crash coming down the Col de Peyresourde in the central Pyrenees,
Ullrich waiting for Armstrong after another mishap, the bunch waiting for Marco Pantani to get back up to them after a puncture on Alpe d’Huez. But there have been times when it has
controversially not been adhered to, most infamously two years ago on the misty wet top of the Pyrenean giant, the Col du Tourmalet, when Alberto Contador took one look at Andy Schleck’s
dropped chain and shot off to gain a 39-second advantage on the stage. Just to rub salt into the aggrieved Luxembourger’s wounds, Contador’s advantage over the second-placed Schleck in
Paris was exactly 39 seconds.

One man who is clearly not so keen on the chivalric code is Thomas Voeckler’s Europcar teammate, Pierre Rolland. The Frenchman launches an attack on the descent after Wiggins had brought
the race under control with the consent of his rivals, then tries again after they bring him back. His claims that he knew nothing of Evans’s difficulties or of any other riders in trouble
mark Rolland as either being economical with
la vérité
or perhaps being the most vacant rider in the bunch.

A grateful Evans regains the bunch as they coast towards the beautiful little Roman outpost of Foix. They are now an improbable eighteen minutes behind the lead group, where the breakaway riders
are trying to figure out how they can eject the green jersey of intrepid Peter Sagan from their midst. The key is held by the crafty Luis Leon Sanchez, who times his attack to perfection to solo
into the finish and take his third Tour de France victory. After spending as much time on the deck as in the saddle during the first week, the second week has been an active one for the Spanish
break specialist as he tried continuously to land a stage.

Indeed, it is a day of redemption for his Rabobank team. The Dutch outfit is the longest continuous sponsor in the sport and is renowned for the amount of cash they pour in at all levels in the
Netherlands, but due to a host of misfortunes they have been left with just four riders in this race. Today all four of the survivors finish near the front of the race, giving them an improbable
shot in the arm by not only taking the stage but the mantle of best team on the day.

Cadel Evans gives a signal of thanks to Bradley Wiggins, Team Sky and the other riders who waited for him on the descent of the Mur de Péguère as the big group crosses the line.
The tack talk is about to begin in earnest.

Unsurprisingly, Evans’s sporting director at BMC Jean Lelangue is among the first to wade in for some forthright condemnation of the mystery perpetrator, stating that ‘it was a
criminal act by hooligans’. It’s difficult to disagree with that conclusion, or the one offered by the man who had only enhanced his reputation on an afternoon of high drama and
tension, Bradley Wiggins. ‘What can you do? It’s something we can’t control. It’s sad, but those are the type of things we have to put up with as cyclists. If that happened
in a football stadium or wherever, you’d be arrested and seen on CCTV. But we are out there quite vulnerable at times; very close to the public on climbs.’

Not keen on puffing his chest out on the subject of his sportsmanship, Brad was nevertheless persuaded to find some words on Pierre Rolland’s behaviour. ‘I thought it was a little
bit uncouth at that time. So many guys punctured at once, it became quite apparent very quickly that something was up. He didn’t just attack once, he attacked twice. It didn’t seem very
honourable.’

The Tour de France has suffered at times in the absence of the traditional
patron
of years gone by, a leader who is universally respected and can be expected to make decisions on behalf
of the whole bunch where necessary. In the old days this would have been Merckx or Hinault. Armstrong had authority but not a general mandate, and his contemporaries Johan Museeuw and Mario
Cipollini were more popular among their countrymen, but he did keep some kind of semblance of order over the race that he came to own.

Perhaps the Tour found a successor today.

TEAM SKY
’
S FIRST TOUR
de France began inauspiciously. Their declared intent to leave no stone unturned in the search for
marginal gains, with no detail too small to matter, meant they pored over weather reports and forecasts before the prologue in Rotterdam. Believing that rain would arrive later in the day rendering
the 8.9km course slower, the tactical decision was made to put Bradley Wiggins out early to miss the downpour and set a fast time.

‘Too clever by half,’ rued Bradley later, after he got caught in the showers that arrived earlier than expected, then watched as the hitters shot round a rapidly drying course to
render his time something of an embarrassment. Seventy-seventh for a man who had finished third and fourth in the previous two Tour de France prologues he had contested was not the ideal start.

All the talk of the first week revolved around the third stage which would take the field over a big slice of the familiar
pavé
of Paris–Roubaix. After a protest-driven
go-slow had ruined a rain-drenched first stage, deemed dangerous by the bunch after multiple pile-ups, this was the first opportunity for a shakedown. Brad rode with his customary aplomb over the
crooked setts, and was delighted to keep a low profile in the Sky team despite a fine eighth place on the stage, as the plaudits all went to his young teammate Geraint Thomas. The youngster had
blasted over the cobbles and run the cobblemeister Thor Hushovd close for the stage win, settling for second place and the white jersey of best young rider. He was second overall, too, while Brad
was up to fourteenth. Not bad for the nascent team.

The race sped across northern France and down towards the Alps, Mark Cavendish taking back-to-back stage wins for HTC, the new name of the High Road set-up. A tricky
moyenne montagnes
stage in the Jura followed. Sylvain Chavanel soloed to victory while the favourites kept a close eye on each other on the climbs. Brad picked up a few places as the race shed a few non-climbers and
looked forward to tackling the Alps from the comfort of eleventh on GC. The real action would begin the next day with a journey into the mountain bikers’ paradise of Morzine and Les Gets,
with a mountain top finish at Avoriaz. This would be where the favourites would show their hands and we would know who was in charge of this absorbing race.

Throughout his long winning streak, the most amazing thing about Lance Armstrong was his invincibility. He never crashed. He never fell ill. He never had mechanicals. He never suffered. It was
this aura of untouchability that did for his great rival Jan Ullrich more than anything else: Ullrich simply believed that Armstrong could not be beaten. His comeback had been slightly different.
The previous year had ended up with a podium place, yes, but he was in effect well beaten by Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck. This race was turning into a disaster. That force field had well and
truly evaporated. Firstly, a puncture on the cobbled stage had left him distanced and floundering in a dusty choke of team cars with no team assistance, chasing alone for miles and ending up with a
significant deficit. Another rivet was removed from his cast-iron suit of armour on this stage to Avoriaz, when the great man actually had a crash. Then another. Then another. The only three times
anybody could remember Armstrong crashing in the Tour de France – all in one day. He rolled over the line 11’45” after the winner, Andy Schleck.

Team Sky suffered in the first of those spills when they lost the excellent Simon Gerrans to a broken arm. There wasn’t any good news from Bradley Wiggins to cheer the team up, either.
After looking good for the majority of the day he struggled on the final climb up to Avoriaz, losing touch when the main group was still quite large. In his diaries, published as
On Tour,
he contemplated what had happened. ‘Was it the heat or altitude, or have I got my training wrong?’ His uncertainty was all-pervading. The British public, high on Cav’s stage wins
and full of expectation for Brad and the new team, were brought down to earth with a bump. Even if this was a blip, our man was now 2’45” behind the new leader, the World Champion,
Cadel Evans. That was a lot of time.

After a rest day, the peloton tackled the biggest day’s climbing of the Tour; 66km of the 207 were spent going up mountains, the biggest of which was the Col de la Madeleine, just before
the finish in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. Once again, it was depressing viewing for Bradley’s fans as he found himself fighting to stay in touch with the leaders. He lost the best part of five
minutes to Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck, the men he had aspired to beat. It was a chastening and sad day for the hero of Athens, Beijing and Ventoux. Mick Rogers was also enduring a rough time
as leader of the HTC-Columbia team, and it seemed increasingly likely that this would be the last time he would be seen as a contender in the world’s biggest race.

The Tour de France quickly became the Schleck–Contador show as they put on a battle royal. Andy had lost his brother Frank as early as that Roubaix-style stage with a broken collarbone on
the
pavé
, and some critics seemed to think that this actually allowed him to express himself and ride more freely, a suggestion hotly denied by the Schlecks and their Saxo Bank
team.

They would rage against each other all the way to Paris, where the difference gained when Contador took advantage of Schleck’s mechanical problems in the Pyrenees was all the Spanish rider
needed to retain his title.

Mark Cavendish picked up an incredible five stages in the race. Brad took a quietly creditable top ten finish in the long time trial. But 24th place at the Tour de France was not what he or the
team had in mind when they signed up to this great project. Many traditionalists had baulked at Team Sky’s new methods. They perceived as arrogance the notion that a British team could come
along and just tell them all, ‘You’ve been doing it all wrong.’ There were sniggers in the
salle du presse
at Wiggins’s travails in the mountains. ‘All part
of the plan,’ they would chuckle. Wiggins, Yates and Brailsford wanted to come back in 2011 and shove those laughs right down their throats. But they needed to find a better way of doing
it.

Contador inadvertently summed up the problem when caught in a philosophical mood in Paris. ‘Cycling is not like mathematics; there are moments when you are well prepared and everything
runs smoothly, and there are times when you are well prepared and everything does not.’

The drawing board beckoned.

There was an unsavoury postscript to the 2010 Tour de France when it was announced at the end of September that Alberto Contador had tested positive during the race for Clenbuterol, a steroid.
In one of the more convoluted drugs cases in sporting history, he fought a long battle to clear his name and eventually failed. All his results from that moment forward were expunged until his
return to racing in late 2012. The record books now show that Andy Schleck won the 2010 Tour de France, but the Luxembourger would dearly love to cross the line first before his career is over.
Time is on his side: he is five years younger than the 2012 champion.

We’re still in the Pyrenees, and will be in them or under their shadow for most of this riveting final week. A hillyish day today is followed by the now traditional second
rest day, then two big days in the high mountains for Bradley Wiggins to beat off his challengers for the yellow jersey. And he has Saturday up his sleeve – the second individual time trial
in this race where he will not be expected to concede anything to anybody.

Perhaps it’s the looming rest day, but today’s stage holds nothing of interest for the contenders. A break goes. It is brought back. Repeat. Another break goes and is chased for a
while, then left to its own devices. The break rides powerfully together for a while, then attack each other to try and win the stage. When Pierrick Fédrigo storms by Christian Vande Velde
to win in Pau for the second time in his career it’s great for him and his FDJ team, and for the French who celebrate another stage victory. Those of us with an interest in the greater prizes
on offer in this year’s Tour will have to wait until after the rest day to see them unfold.

*

So. Where do you stand on Lance Armstrong? Persecuted hero? Or inveterate liar and cheat?

It’s impossible to talk about cycling in 2012 without some discussion of Armstrong, his career and inevitably his alleged use of banned substances over that time. This seems particularly
apt when we reach this second rest day and find ourselves facing a depressingly familiar story of a rider being accused of doping.

It’s worth reacquainting ourselves with the Armstrong legend; a story such as this has never been heard in the history of sport and is equally unlikely to be repeated.