Bradley Wiggins (9 page)

Terminally psyched out by McGee, Wiggins slumped alarmingly in the final after a great qualifying run and found himself humiliatingly caught by the Australian. There was no outward sign of
disagreement between the pair of Brads at any time – Wiggins has often said that McGee is a thoroughly decent guy and a great bike rider – just this sense on Wiggins’s part that
he couldn’t beat him. The disappointment of Manchester was replicated at the Worlds in Copenhagen, where his FDJ teammate’s presence loomed large over him once more.

Things weren’t going well. FDJ had lost interest in their investment – if they’d ever shown any in the first place – and Great Britain’s greatest track talent was
in danger of spiralling away from his goals of World and Olympic glory just when he should have been reaching greater heights.

Brad was called to a crisis meeting with Peter Keen, Dave Brailsford and Simon Jones. Reminding them all unintentionally that he was still a callow 22-year-old, Wiggins blew his top, suggesting
that his medal haul was pretty good, thank you very much, and they should be grateful for what he’d done; not so critical. And it was his ball and he was taking it home. The quartet looked at
each other for a few minutes as the dust settled, then began calmly to map a way out of the woods. Before he knew it, Brad was part of the solution and no longer part of the problem. He found
himself signing up to a new credo that had one intention: making him Olympic Individual Pursuit Champion at the Athens Olympics, which were now less than two years away.

The main plank of this ambitious plan was the newly retired maestro, Chris Boardman. Ten years after his own Olympic success had inspired the new Wiggins, The Professor was hired to mentor his
protégé to success in Athens.

If Brad had expected a few cosy phone calls and the odd chat on a long ride, though, he was mistaken. Boardman brought his single-minded scientific approach along with him and spent all day
every day working on or with his charge, notating every training ride, every race performance and, most of all, every conversation. Boardman was a man on a mission and was going to be on
Wiggins’s case every minute of every day until the destiny of that gold medal was decided. A montage scene of Brad as Rocky Balboa punching huge haunches of meat while Chris Boardman in the
Burgess Meredith role looks on holding a stopwatch and urging more and more effort is irresistible.

Brad had somebody else in his corner, too. He’d met Cath after the Commonwealth Games, a Lancashire girl who’d been around cycling all her life. They’d known each other through
association on various junior squads for a few years, but now the two of them were in love and by the end of 2002 they were living together. Brad shelved plans to return to his miserable French
existence and spent his second year with FDJ commuting to races from Manchester while Cath finished her degree. Just like his explosive arrival on the world track scene, when it came to girls it
looked like Brad had managed to get it right first time.

The year 2003 was immediately better without being easier. British bike fans had something to cheer about at the classics for the first time since Sean Yates’s retirement some years
previously, when Brad made storming albeit brief appearances at the front of the Tour of Flanders and the outrageous cobbles of the Arenberg forest in Paris–Roubaix. From the northern
greyness he headed south for the colour of the Giro d’Italia and his first grand tour. It was all part of Boardman’s plan for Olympic domination and FDJ were only too happy to have
their second-year pro bolster the team. French teams are notoriously disinterested in the Tour of Italy, so getting a spot was no scramble. Wiggins hauled himself over more mountains and was
pleased with his performance over the three weeks. It ended a little disappointingly when he was part of a large group eliminated for finishing marginally outside the time limit on the last big
mountain stage. The organisers were expected to allow them to continue but chose not to; it is their right, but not the tradition. The eighteen stages Wiggins had completed would be a source of
strength over the rest of the year.

Given time off from FDJ, as he was not part of their Tour de France plans, Wiggins trained like a demon for seven weeks then travelled with Team GB to Stuttgart for the World Track Championships
in great form and full of confidence. There was no Brad McGee to worry about this time; a strong Tour de France for the FDJ leader had turned a little sour afterwards as he was tired and fell ill,
missing the chance to take on Wiggins in the pursuit.

With no nemesis in his path, Bradley Wiggins cruised to his first senior title – Individual Pursuit World Champion. Bursting with pride in his new rainbow jersey, the new champ would be
forgiven for wondering on the victory podium in Stuttgart how many races he would be able to wear it in, such is the pro roadman’s dearth of opportunities to ride pursuits.

There was a slight dip in the high the following day when the Australian team pursuit quartet, who’d already beaten a confident England in the previous summer’s Commonwealth Games,
hammered Team GB in the Worlds final, setting a new world record in the process.

Brad was delighted with his new-found status and got ready to celebrate in style. He had failed to take The Professor into account. Chris Boardman wanted to know where Wiggins would find the
extra couple of seconds he might need to defeat McGee the next summer in Athens, and proceeded to harangue the new World Champion about it all the way back to Manchester. Cath was very protective
of her man and hearing him moaning about Boardman’s constant badgering was making her resent what she saw as bullying, but deep down they both knew that Brad just needed somebody to complain
to. He knew that Boardman was right, and if he wanted to be Olympic Champion as well as World Champion, it would be with Boardman’s help.

Part of that plan was to get out of Brad McGee’s lengthening shadow and leave FDJ. Boardman was instrumental again, finding a ride for Bradley Wiggins at his old French team Crédit
Agricole for Olympic year. Brad left FDJ the present of the Tour de l’Avenir prologue in his last race as their rider and headed back to England.

After a heavy winter of bike riding, partying and moving house, the new team and new programme felt disjointed to Brad and he contrived to suffer an awful spring. He was going nowhere on the
bike, backwards on the track and Chris Boardman was pulling his hair out. Problems were beginning to mount, not least because there were other riders with a claim to the Olympic place that, as
World Champion, Brad had assumed would be his. Paul Manning smashed him in a pursuit in Manchester. Rob Hayles posted the second fastest time in the world and took a brilliant silver medal in the
Worlds. The Worlds were held early to avoid an Olympic clash and Brad was tactfully left out of the squad in an effort to find some form. The three-man push for the two places was thrown into
further confusion when David Millar, the World Time Trial Champion, threw his hat into the ring for a place in the individual pursuit and began some testing to see where he stood against the other
contenders. Pushed into riding a pursuit for his Team GB masters at the Manchester Velodrome, Brad performed disastrously and abandoned before half distance.

To top it all off, Brad McGee was in great form.

It looked like curtains for the prize that mattered most to Wiggins. He wasn’t even going to get a chance. He wasn’t even going to get on the plane to Greece.

The turning point in Brad’s season came shortly after that unaccountably poor ride in Manchester. Three events in short succession forced him into contention and turned everything
around.

First, Shane Sutton barked long and hard at all the other members of the selection committee something along the lines of the old form-is-temporary-class-is-permanent argument. Wiggins was their
best chance of a medal no matter what anybody else was doing. He was outnumbered, but he can be a very persuasive man.

Second, Paul Manning did an amazing thing. He called the selection panel and told them he no longer wished to be considered for selection, as he felt Brad’s chances were better than his
own and he didn’t want to stand in the way of Great Britain winning an Olympic gold. What a man. Nobody involved in that discussion, least of all Bradley Wiggins himself, will ever forget
Manning’s actions, especially as he had a realistic, if outside, chance of a medal.

Third, and altogether sleazier, David Millar was arrested in Biarritz and charged with doping. He confessed and told all, was stripped of his world title, given a ban from cycling and a lifetime
ban from the Olympics.

The road was suddenly clear for Bradley Wiggins. It was back on. He struggled over the mountains with Crédit Agricole in the Tour de Suisse and found his legs beginning to come back.
Slowly but steadily, he began to find his World Championship form of the previous year. Even Chris Boardman began to ease up on the nagging.

In Athens, Brad went into the competition unseeded as he had missed the Worlds earlier in the spring. It worked in his favour as he threw down the most incredible time of four minutes and
fifteen seconds, a new Olympic record and the fastest time in the world since certain types of bikes had been banned for being ‘unsporting’ a few years earlier. It was a remarkable
performance, two seconds quicker than McGee and Hayles, although both men turned in thoroughly decent rides. In the semi-final he held a little back, having the advantage of going last due to his
incredible morning ride. He still managed to slip under McGee’s ride by nearly a second. The two men would be riding against each other in the final of a major tournament again, but surely
this time Wiggins could banish any negative thoughts.

Bradley sat at the doping control after his semi-final ride alongside Chris Hoy, who was there to be tested after storming to gold in the kilo. It says everything about the way Great Britain has
come to dominate the recent Olympic track events that the IOC decided to remove one of Sir Chris’s favourite events for London 2012, yet the great man found something else he could win
instead. On that day, however, sitting beside Hoy who was flushed with his victory, Wiggins could not bring himself to even look at his teammate’s medal. He wanted one of his own.

McGee. His old nemesis. Could he overcome those negative thoughts?

Oh yes, he could. Bradley Wiggins cruised to victory. Bradley McGee held him tight for the first 2,000m, but the second half of the race was a different story as Wiggins inexorably slipped
further and further ahead of his old rival. Displaying all the Olympic spirit that great champions seem to muster at their worst moments, McGee was the first to congratulate the new champion.

‘Representing Great Britain, Bradley Wiggins.’ Just re-reading those words and hearing in your head that first restrained chord of the national anthem – will we ever tire of
it?

Bradley Wiggins, individual pursuit Olympic gold medallist.

There was a silver in the team pursuit, too, then a brilliant bronze in the madison with Rob Hayles. Brad was the first British athlete since Mary Rand in Tokyo in 1964 to win three medals in a
single Olympics. He was promptly awarded an OBE.

And just before the Games had begun, Cath had given him the news that he was to be a father.

Chris Froome first permeated the cycling public consciousness during the 2011 Vuelta a España. He and Bradley Wiggins rode brilliantly on the climbs to the Sierra Nevada
and the ski station at La Covatilla to show themselves and Team Sky as the dominant force in a race short on favourites. The pair’s power on the climbs and their similar looks – long,
rangy riders with smooth, steady rhythms – made them an easily recognisable duo, and it looked for all the world as though Wiggins would become the first British winner of a grand tour.

The race’s long time trial, approximately halfway through the mountainous three-week race, was the designated moment where Brad would ride into the leader’s red jersey. However, not
prepared for the altitude of the day’s
parcours
and guilty of not judging his effort, Wiggins faded over the second half of the ride and missed his chance. The man who grasped the
nettle without even realising it was available was a bemused Chris Froome, now leader of the Tour of Spain, the world’s third biggest bike race.

Team Sky had a decision to make. What would the plan be now? Shane Sutton, Dave Brailsford’s right-hand man, was hastily parachuted in to help the team’s inexperienced DS, Steven de
Jongh. Sutton was clear: it’s all about Bradley.

The next day, another mountain top finish, was illuminated by the odd sight of the race’s leader dragging an elite group to the finish while his team leader cruised along on his wheel. The
Spanish press were outraged, declaiming Team Sky’s tactics as disrespectful to the illustrious history of their race. The team responded that they were following a plan that had always been
in place, a plan that they felt was their best chance of winning the race. The day looked like a success: Froome’s outstanding efforts saw him eventually dropped, the
domestique
-cum-leader-cum-
domestique
giving everything for Wiggins. The Anglo-African collapsed into his seat on the Team Sky bus at the finish at Montana Manzaneda safe in the
knowledge that his work had put his more illustrious teammate back into the jersey he had worn that day.

Team Sky had made one miscalculation. The final week would see the race head up the Angliru, the Asturian mountain that boasted the tag of The Hardest Climb in Cycling. With some stretches
reaching 24%, it’s ridiculously steep for a major race. Too steep for Wiggins, it emerged, when, despite more selfless work from Froome, he lost more than the minute he held over Geox’s
Juan José Cobo and with it the race lead.

What now? Team Sky decided to go on the offensive with both riders. Perhaps, if they could put Cobo under pressure over the remaining days, one or other of them could isolate him and take the
jersey back. Peña Cabarga, the last hilltop finish of the race, represented their only chance. It also happened to be in JJ Cobo’s back yard, and the local boy could count on massive
support, spilling over at times into vitriol at the British riders’ nerve in trying to take their hero’s glory.