Inside Team Sky (6 page)

It wasn’t just their absences that would be felt. To properly support Wiggins at the Giro earlier in the summer, Sky sent the Colombians Rigoberto Urán and Sergio Henao to the
Italian race. After illness ended Wiggins’s race, Urán became the de facto team leader, won a mountain stage and went on to finish second. It was impressive.

Both he and Henao would have made the Tour de France team stronger but, wearied by their efforts in Italy, they had to be left at home. At the
Sunday Times
evening I argued that the
team would not be able to control the race because it just wasn’t strong enough. I’d expected Sutton to argue the opposite, but he didn’t. Without saying anything against the
riders selected, he clearly thought it wasn’t a particularly strong team.

I am sitting in a team car at the finish. Rushes and sand dunes outside. Soon we’ll be heading for the airport and the flight Brailsford has chartered for those members
of staff not needed to take team vehicles on the ferry. I am in the backseat alone as the staff tend to the million-and-one duties they have at the end of a stage. Dave Brailsford arrives, slumps
into the front seat and with a sigh he says, ‘You know what? We don’t have a team.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Today we weren’t there on that last climb. Just Froomey and Richie and Edvald. Pete Kennaugh was sick, G [Thomas] is in a bad way with his pelvis, and I don’t know
what’s happening with the others. I didn’t see this happening on this stage but it’s not ideal. On the other hand, Froomey is very strong, Richie’s good and we’ve just
got to get on and make the best of what we’ve got.’

What is impressive is his refusal to be falsely optimistic. I know how Brailsford and his team plan for every contingency. And now this evening in Corsica, just three days into the Tour, Dave
Brailsford, master of the cycling universe, is conceding that he has come to the Tour de France ‘without a team’.

There should be histrionics. A note of despair. Instead the concession brings an insight into what makes Team Sky what it is. What has just happened is a fact. It is a problem. The problem will
have to be solved. It is something to deal with.

At the airport the mood among the staff is subdued. Men hand in and then pick up their bags without much talking. Psychologically these are a group of upbeat people. They feel a responsibility
to give off a good vibe and, most of the time, it doesn’t involve an effort. Today is a jolting collision with reality that they can’t pretend not to have seen. Suppose the team is as
weak as it seemed on that 145km spin from Ajaccio. Suppose there is no figuring a way out.

That evening Kerrison, the head of performance, felt bad migraines coming. They can wait in the shadows for weeks and then come to life at the Tour. He deals with them in his
way, unable to engage in small or big talk, just concentrating on bearing and banishing the pain. It is noticeable that Brailsford, who is closest to him, leaves him be.

At a table in the airport, the Sky boss starts speaking with Carsten Jeppesen and Dario Cioni. The debrief was underway but they wear faces which hint at the gravity of the situation. What can
we do with the guys who aren’t going well? Which of them just had a bad day and will get better? Let’s look at this rationally. We still have the best rider in the race.

And on they go, calmly and analytically, knowing they have the team time trial the next day, Pyrenees later in the week and many miles to go before they sleep.

Team Sky is a road movie with two leading men. Chris Froome and Bradley Wiggins don’t have the easy affability of Hope and Crosby. There is no straight man and no fall
guy. Froome and Wiggins are ambitious, prickly and acutely aware that even though there are three Grand Tours every year, there is only one that young boys (not brought up in Italy or Spain) dream
of.

The chief cycling narrative of the spring of 2013 will be which man gets to contest the yellow jersey of the Tour de France. And whether or not his rival will defer to him and accept the role of
superdomestique
. Their breakthrough as cycling’s strangest double act came away from the Tour. They began forging their dynamic of odd couple chafing in the kiln of the 2011
Vuelta.

Those were the strangest of days. Wiggins was already a star. Three Olympic golds and a fourth place in the Tour de France before being lured to Team Sky for more money than seemed sensible.
Froome was half man, half rumour. An infuriating mix of mad potential, comical clumsiness, and undulating form lines. He was Kenyan. He was South African. He was British. He was either the next big
thing or heading towards a quiet expiration of his Team Sky contract.

They had worked together before, but the relationship was defined in Spain. This was the proving ground for both men. Through the first nine stages of the race Froome had been the best Sherpa a
man could wish for, toting the load for Wiggins in a team which had come to Spain without men like Edvald Boasson Hagen, Rigoberto Urán and Geraint Thomas. They looked miscast if they were
expecting to finish on the podium but the defiance of Froome and Wiggins was heroic.

Froome seemed to leave a huge part of his essence on the Spanish roads and mountains every day. On Stage Nine he hauled Wiggins to the Covatilla ski station in the mountains of Sistema Central
while Vincenzo Nibali and Dan Martin set the pace.

The 183km stage was designed to have the action loaded right here at the end day. The day would climax with a 10km 7.2 per cent gradient climb up Sierra de Béjar to La Covatilla. The road
undulates as if created by a wave machine. Before the Covatilla scramble officially starts there are 8km of lesser gradient as a warm-up. Traditionally the heat here is merciless. Riders are made
or broken on this hill.

As the road turned for home and the crosswinds hit the riders, suddenly Froome accelerated, towing Wiggins in his slipstream. Having delivered Wiggins into the lead, Froome dropped back to the
tail end of a group of six riders separated now from the field. Wiggins did the donkey work now through the last kilometre leading, leading, leading, until the final frenetic sprint which went to
Dan Martin. Wiggins came in fourth though. Froome fifth. Just seconds off the lead.

Going into the long time trial the following day Wiggins had proven he could do more than just time trial. Froome had proven that he had arrived. At last.

That was Sunday. Froome should have been spent. On Monday, in the old university town of Salamanca, he would have been excused for cruising. Instead he sought and was granted permission to put
his foot on the gas. And so Chris Froome ad-libbed his way through a gruelling 47km time trial which ran in a loop out from and back to the city.

Time-trial days involve a burst of intense effort but lots of waiting around. Most of the heavy hitters in the discipline were out early. Taylor Phinney (BMC Racing Team) set the early mark.
Fabian Cancellara (Leopard-Trek) eclipsed him. Then the German time-trialling star Tony Martin of HTC-Highroad took a couple of minutes out of Cancellara’s time. A couple of hours and many
riders passed without anybody coming near.

Wiggins came down the ramp like a demon though. His first intermediate split after 13.3km was a second faster than Martin’s. Wiggins was in business.

Froome passed the same marker a little later, turning in a respectable time some 24 seconds slower than Wiggins.

When Wiggins pressed the turbo button, however, nothing happened. At the 30km mark he found himself 19 seconds behind Martin. Understandable. Tony Martin is Tony Martin. But when Froome passed
the same mark he had gained 23 seconds on Wiggins.

So to the final run home, 17km into Salamanca and the Plaza Mayor. By the time Wiggins got there he was 1'03" behind Martin. Forgiveable, until Froome rode home 23 seconds ahead of his team
leader.

After the heroics on Stage Nine, Sky had expected that this time trial would give Wiggins a substantial lead on General Classification. Instead the red jersey was handed to the gangly
apprentice, Chris Froome. He was pleased, but aware of the difficulties the situation presented.

‘I’m in trouble. This situation was never the plan. I got the green light to go for the time trial as hard as I could. I’m over the moon.’

They had a rest day before heading into the Cantabrian Mountains. Team Sky who had never seriously challenged for a Grand Tour had the red jersey on the shoulders of their stronger climber. His
leader was in third place. The problem was that Chris Froome had come here for weeks of servitude. If it was time for a rethink there was no suggestion of it on the road that day.

Sky’s tactic on the mountains remained the same. Keep the speed high. Turn the climbs as far as possible into the time-trial-like efforts that would suit Bradley Wiggins. The workload for
the tactic fell on Wiggins’s teammates, mainly Froome.

The hallmark of the Vuelta is its unique climbs, which present themselves not as long steady hauls to the clouds but as a series of short punchy gradients coming one after the other. It was on
this corrugated landscape that Froome sacrificed himself, hauling Wiggins up the 19km ascent towards the summit finish at Manzaneda. With 3km to go after a day of shepherding his leader,
Froome’s legs finally went. Wiggins found his way home alone.

That evening in Galicia, Froome realised he had left everything on the roads in order to hand the red jersey to Wiggins. Froome was now 7 seconds down in second place. Still, when he crossed the
line he went straight to Wiggins to congratulate him.

The next day, on Stage Eleven, Froome delivered again, responding to a series of attacks before ceding to Wiggins on the long climb home. Wiggins ended the day in red. Froome was second in the
General Classification.

His sacrifice had been huge but it was what he got paid so handsomely to do. And with contract negotiations pending, more reward would come later.

Wiggins retained the jersey through four stages before losing it to Juan José Cobo, a local favourite and the eventual winner of La Vuelta. Froome finished just 13 seconds behind Cobo in
second place on the podium knowing, in his bones, that first place could have been his. Wiggins was third, 1'39" behind.

30 January 2013: Vanity Hotel Golf, Mallorca. It is Wednesday evening, the fifth day of my first week inside Team Sky, and the moment to speak for the first time with Chris
Froome. We have passed each other in the hotel, once he’d sat in the bar reading a serious newspaper. Another morning I’d gone to the small hotel gym to see him work out with Richie
Porte, his best friend in the team.

His friendship with Porte is interesting because they are so different. With Porte, what you see is what he is. And what he thinks is what you hear.

Froome has always been guarded – considering, sifting, then speaking. When his rise began, those who managed Sky’s media affairs would say: ‘We need to get Froomey to give a
little more of himself.’ And that morning in the gym with Porte, he gave plenty. Ben MacDonald, the Team Sky physiotherapist, supervised a session in which the riders did a tough circuit of
strength and stretching exercises.

Porte is small but neatly proportioned. He looked every inch the athlete.

Froome is different, his tallness accentuated by his thinness. More than 6ft tall, he will start the Tour de France weighing 10st 6lb. But when the exercises get tough, Froome’s strength
leaves an impression that would overwhelm every other memory from that workout. In the gym Porte seemed like a boy to Froome’s man.

I am reminded of the story often told within the team to illustrate Froome’s physical freakiness. The former American rider Bobby Julich had been assigned to sand the rough edges off
Froome in the 2011 season. He began by running some lab tests, the results of which startled him. Rod Ellingworth had to check the calibrations on the machinery but the numbers were right. They
knew then that Julich was polishing a Tour de France podium finisher.

That evening, Froome was already there when I arrived. We speak for half an hour or so. He is polite, comes across as intelligent but he is reserved, as if he’s learnt that the less you
say, the less you get into trouble. Two memories survive from the conversation.

The first was his time at St Andrew’s School in Bloemfontein.

How could a 13-year-old from Kenya without a word of Afrikaans have survived at this predominantly Afrikaans school? He said it was not easy at the time but when you looked at the bigger picture
you saw the benefits. It toughened him.

Everything Froome says is delivered in well-formed and politely expressed sentences but you soon learn not to confuse politeness with softness. The other memory came from the corner of
Froome’s soul where you find granite.

The conversation had turned to the coming season and how he felt about riding the Tour de France in the same team as the defending champion, Bradley Wiggins. ‘What I want,’ he said,
‘is to arrive at the start in Corsica with my chance to win the race. Nothing more, nothing less.’ What he didn’t say but wanted you to know is that he would have his chance to
win this year, no matter what. His intensity recalled what Apollo Creed said to Rocky Balboa: ‘Now, when we fought, you had that eye of the tiger, man, the edge!’

Two weeks later, Froome rode his first race of the year, the Tour of Oman. On the fourth day he rode well to finish second to Spaniard Joaquim Rodríguez on Green Mountain, took the
leader’s jersey and attended to the usual podium, media and anti-doping duties. A car waited to take him the twenty kilometres to the team hotel.

‘The car’s over there,’ someone said.

‘It’s okay, I’ll ride back, a little extra training.’

Eye of the tiger, man.

He is the man.

When I speak to Bradley Wiggins he appears to acknowledge this.

‘When we go to the Tour and the form guide says Chris is the man, I will be supporting Chris, we’re in a team and that’s why we’re successful.’