At the start of a time trial in a professional race a lot of the riders roll out of the gate in a very relaxed way, as if they’re going out on the Sunday club run. But I always do the same thing: I bounce back on the bike when the starter does the final countdown, ‘Five, four …’ and then I push back on to the guy holding the back of the bike as if my back wheel is locked into a start gate on the track. I do it even in a one-hour time trial on the road; it’s a habit I’ve maintained from going through that process on the boards so many times. Then I hit that first couple of hundred metres as if it was a pursuit: flat out. I always do it. At that point it’s so difficult to keep calm. You’ve been working yourself up into this mental state for the last forty minutes and you’re so hyped, so pumped. I have to control myself; I have to say, ‘Come on, Bradley, you’ve still got an hour and five minutes to go here.’
So now, I’ve come down the ramp in Bonneval, made my massive start effort, and then it’s time to get a grip. I really back off the pressure, as I always do after that initial big push down the ramp and into the first few hundred metres, and that’s where I start to use my power output on the little screen on the handlebars as a guide to keep myself under control. I’m under way so I just settle down into the rhythm of whatever power I’ve chosen. At Bonneval, the stage started uphill, so naturally you’re pushing a lot more power. For the first 600 or 700m I’m just trying not to go too much over 600 watts, get over the top, then I really settle down and that’s where Sean starts talking to me: ‘Right, come on, Brad, this is it, this is your area, this is your domain, this is what you do best. Let’s settle in.’ The power I’ve chosen is over 450 watts so on the flat sections I’m looking at holding 450–460 watts, and whenever the road ramps up slightly I’m taking it up to about 470, 480, 490, but again trying not to go over 500 watts, and likewise then, when it was slightly downhill, I’m coming back down to 430.
I can sustain 450 watts for an hour, so obviously the first twenty minutes of that is not difficult. It’s a bit like being a 400m runner: running the first 100m should feel relatively easy. In a time trial, the first twenty minutes you’re just out there, cruising along; you’re trying not to go too hard, to hold back the emotion, not to get too much adrenaline from all the crowds along the way and all the British flags, to resist that urge to go that little bit harder, because that’s where the danger is.
You can think, ‘Let’s go out hard early, kill the race.’ I made that mistake in the 2011 Vuelta in the time trial, went off way too fast for the condition I had at the time and paid for it at the end. Here I know that I’m in the best shape of my life, so it’s about keeping in that controlled state. That’s what time trialling is all about, especially over those distances. It’s being able to ride that fine line, and keep the concentration, keep the composure. That’s the key; that’s what makes some people better time triallists than others. So at that stage, you’re concentrating, but you’re still very aware of everything around you; it’s not like a pursuit where you perform so intensely and you’re unaware of everything else, the crowd for example. So I’m riding along, I’m seeing British cycling fans at the roadside, Union Jacks, posters and things, and every now and again I might think, ‘Oh yeah, I’m at 460 watts; that’s fine.’
The first reference point in my head is seventeen or eighteen minutes into the stage, because that’s when I take a gel. I’m thinking, ‘Right, ten minutes gone, ride along a few more minutes; fifteen minutes gone, I’ve got three minutes until I have to take this gel; so it’s eighteen minutes: right, gel, big gel, swig a drink, down, OK, on to phase two.’ I use these little markers for myself as well as the time checks out on the course.
By then I’ve had the first time check which is at 14km; I’m 12secs up on Chris Froome: ‘Brilliant, perfect, it’s all going to plan, that’s confirmation of what I’m feeling; I haven’t really started pushing on yet and I’m getting twelve seconds already on him …’ At that point I’m thinking, ‘Right, you’ve got forty-five minutes to go, Brad, you’re twelve seconds up, your lead is intact, you’re going to win the Tour, let’s keep concentrating, you’ve got forty-five minutes left of everything you’ve worked for this year; this is it.’ I’m really positive, thinking that everything here is confirmation of what I’ve been doing: ‘You deserve this, Brad, this is what you’ve worked towards …’
Sean is talking to me in the earphone all the time, but I’m not always listening to him. He’s saying, ‘This is great, Brad, you’re flowing, you’re eating up the kilometres, you’re twelve seconds up on Froome, the rest are nowhere.’ But he’s actually giving me very important information, for example, ‘You’re coming into a little village now, Brad, there’s a slow, sweeping right, it’s full.’ When he says ‘It’s full’, that means I can stay in the skis – stretched out on the time trial handlebars – ‘No worries, you’re coming up now, round this corner there’s a sharp left. Back off slightly, take care, you don’t need to risk it at this point, hard right, then you’re away, then you can get back down to it.’ That means I know coming into this village I’m going to be sweeping left, hard right, accelerating out, then I get back on to my rhythm. He’s seen the course at least three or four times. He’s ridden the course with me in March, he’s driven the course the day before, he’s driven it in the morning behind one of the other riders, so he’s got everything written out in the car next to him. He’s constantly giving me that info like a co-driver in a rally.
Sean is feeding that information into my earpiece constantly throughout the stage, then little bits of encouragement here and there, and the encouragement becomes stronger and stronger towards the end. One thing I like about him is that he’s very controlled. He never gets too carried away. You see some directeurs sportifs hanging out of windows, it’s just ridiculous. Sean is a bit like a boxer’s trainer in the corner, with that calm voice: ‘Come on, Brad, this is fantastic what you’re doing now, just keep on what you’re doing now.’ He is constantly bringing me back under control, because as a bike rider your urge is always to go harder in time trials. Sean is the guide, the cool head. So he’s saying, ‘This is great, Brad, keep at what you’re doing, you’re fantastic, you’re eating up the kilometres, you look fantastic, you’re flowing’ and all that sort of stuff.
That time trial’s superb for me because it’s all long, straight, flat roads – just what I like. As I progress I start to see Froomie’s helicopter – the one up above him taking pictures for the television – so I know exactly where he is. The helicopter is getting closer to me all the way through so I know I’m gaining on him. When you aren’t getting time checks it’s just a little way of seeing where he is.
A lot of the time you don’t remember the whole ride afterwards, just little clips of it. I remember, distinctly, one section after about forty minutes, with about twenty-five minutes left of the race. I’d pushed the pace a little bit above what I was aiming to go at. If I aim for 450 or 460 watts, I’ll always push the top part of that, so I was trying to hold 460; and after forty-odd minutes I’d been sustaining this, I knew I was floating; I was on a good one. We were just going up this small incline, maybe 2 per cent, for a long, long time, and I was motoring up it, and I remember holding 490 odd watts up this rise for a couple of minutes, and then just over the top Sean saying to me, ‘You’re absolutely flying, Brad, you’re eating up the kilometres, I tell you this is impressive.’ I know James Murdoch (who had been crucial in securing Sky’s sponsorship) is in the passenger seat, and I wonder what he thinks of all this. I allow myself to have that thought for a second and then I get back down to it.
The further we go into the race, the more I’m beginning to realise: ‘This is it, I’ve won the Tour, I’ve done it.’ With each kilometre going by, I’m a little more inspired by that thought and that makes me push even more; there is a sort of aggression, a hunger within me, an urge to keep gaining as much time as possible. I want to win this race. There is no sense of, ‘Oh, you’ve done it now, you can
back off slightly.’ No: I want more, more, more.
So then we come off the big wide main roads on to smaller roads in the last 10km and it’s at that point that it’s starting to get painful at this pace. The physical effort is beginning to take its toll: the first twenty minutes are almost easy, the next twenty minutes you’re having to concentrate more, but the last twenty minutes is where the pain starts kicking in. In that first forty minutes you feel, ‘Yeah, I can sustain this power, at any stage I could take it up twenty, thirty watts.’ In the last 10km that’s gone and you’re thinking, ‘I’m actually struggling to hold this now.’ But in spite of the pain, I’m still able to lift it up. And at about 5km to go we turn left on to this little road and then the gradient starts ramping up, and I’m still pushing and it’s really hurting and with every kilometre that’s going past, once we’re within 5km to go, I’m beginning to think of a lot of other things, and that is inspiring me to push on even harder.
The thoughts come, but not to the detriment of the effort. I’m not wavering and losing concentration or slowing down. I’m going just as hard, and what’s going through my head is inspiring me more and more. Sean says, ‘You’ve got 5k to go, Brad, you’ve got eight minutes left of this Tour de France, eight minutes and you’ve won the Tour, 4k to go, Brad, six minutes to go and you’ve won the Tour de France, six minutes left and it’s all over.’ With those little things that Sean is saying to me I’m thinking, ‘This is it, six more minutes’, and my mind starts going back …
I’d be going out in December, I’d be in the gym at 6 a.m. doing my core work, then getting out on the bike early doors; four hours, five hours; I’d be riding all round Pendle, out on Waddington Fell in a hailstorm, thinking, ‘Oh shit, I’m two hours from home now, this is ridiculous, I’m two hours out, how am I going to get home?’ I’d get back and my fingers wouldn’t bend from the cold, so Cath would have to take the gloves off my hands, but I’d think, ‘This is what is going to win the Tour.’ It had said four hours on the programme; it was three degrees outside and it was hailing up there in the hills, but I just had to go and do that four hours because that might make the difference; Cadel Evans might not go out, might not do anything that day.
Sean is saying, ‘Brad, 3k to go, and it’s all over, this is it, Brad, this is where all the training’s come in, just think of all those rides we were doing in Tenerife, you know all those little things …’
I’m back in Tenerife on a day when we’ve done four and a half, five, six hours; we’ve done five or six efforts throughout the day and a couple of the guys are stuck to the floor. Tim is saying, ‘OK, guys, there’s an option of a last effort here, I know a few of you are a bit nailed now so you can just roll up if you want, but if you feel you can do this last one, go for it.’ I’m going over those summits in Tenerife, with Shane telling me, ‘Come on, Brad, this is where the Tour’s won, you know.’ That was where I’d hit it: it’s like not everyone is going to do that last effort. That was the one which would push me over the edge, but that’s what I’ve always done with the training. It was all for the Tour de France …
And here I am with six minutes left of it. This is what it was for …
I’m on the phone to Cath when I was in Tenerife training at Easter; the kids were off school, and she was saying ‘God, they’re being a nightmare, running riot, I wish you were here.’ It was Ben’s birthday, ‘Why are you not here?’ he and Bella ask; I tell them and they sort of understand why. I say to Cath on the phone, ‘Come on, it will be all right, love, this will all be worth it, you know, we’re not going to do this for ever …’
This is what it’s been all about; Cath and the kids, all the sacrifices they’ve made to get me here …
We’re getting into those last kilometres and I’m thinking of those things, thinking of my childhood, when I started dreaming about the Tour, how I started cycling when I was twelve. I’m about to win the Tour de France, and I’m taking my mind back to riding my bike as a kid going to my grandparents’, thinking of everything I’ve gone through to be at this point now.
There is a lot of pride at what I’ve achieved and what I’ve been through to achieve it. I can hear what people were saying when I signed for Sky – ‘He’s never going to win the Tour, they’re mad, he’s overpaid, it was a fluke, a one-off when he got that 4th place in 2009.’ There have been all the questions, not only for the last three weeks but from the moment I won that first time trial in Algarve: ‘Do you really think you can win the Tour? Is this all a little bit too soon? Have you peaked too early? Is being the favourite a problem for you?’ All those things, all the questions, all the doping stuff, all the suspicion, sitting at the press conferences every day.
I’ve led the Tour for two weeks: I look back and think, ‘Bloody hell, two weeks. There have been only two leaders of this year’s Tour de France.’ Bernard Hinault managed two weeks in the jersey once, in 1981; Lance Armstrong never managed it; Eddy Merckx led for longer, but he was the greatest ever.
The closer I’m getting to the line, Sean starts saying to me, ‘Come on, Brad, just empty it, 1k to go, 600 metres to go and the Tour’s over.’ It’s always in that way: it’s never Sean saying to me, ‘2k to go, that’s it, you’ve won the Tour’, it’s always, ‘Come on, Brad, one minute and it’s over.’
So I am emptying it to the line as if it is a training effort in Tenerife and I have to get out every last little bit. And that’s where the punch in the air happens as I cross the line. It comes from all that emotion I was going through in that last couple of kilometres, for all that hour, for all that morning, for all the days before that time trial. It all comes out in that punch in the air as I go across the line. That’s the defining image of the Tour for me: crossing the line and the punch. It is an incredible, incredible feeling.
Afterwards, my first stop was the team bus to say thanks to my teammates. The job was truly done now: the moment had to be shared with them. At the hotel later on, after giving the winner’s press conference – at the Tour they always do this on the Saturday night because there is so much going on at the Champs-Elysées on the Sunday – I bumped into Sean just round the back of our accommodation, the Campanile, which is a curious kind of hotel where you have to go outside to get to all the bedrooms.
Sean had that massive, creased smile on his face; he laughed a Dick Dastardly laugh, put one arm round me and hugged me. I said, ‘Fuck me!’ and he replied in a funny accent, ‘Tell me about it … I’m just so happy for you.’ The most amazing thing was seeing what it meant to people like him, who had known me for years. It’s a nice feeling, that you can have that kind of impact on other people. He wasn’t the only one: Scott, the photographer who has been working with me for a couple of years, broke down, and one of the mechanics was in tears as well. It’s at that point you realise, hell, it’s not just me who’s gone through this: everyone else around me has lived it too.
Part Three
My Time
CHAPTER 17
* * *
AN ENGLISHMAN IN PARIS
THERE IS AN iconic image of the final stage of the Tour de France that every cycling fan knows. It shows the peloton lined out along the banks of the Seine when the race is going into the centre of Paris, with the yellow jersey sitting behind his teammates at the front of the bunch, and the Eiffel Tower to the right. I remembered watching this on television as a kid: a team riding down the quays, most often with Miguel Indurain riding behind all his guys in the Banesto blue, red and white. It’s a phenomenal moment for a cycling fan, truly legendary. And on the final Sunday of the 2012 Tour, as we rode along past the Eiffel Tower, there was a brief instant when I allowed myself to forget I had a job to do that day; suddenly I saw myself riding at the front of the bunch in the same way I had watched Indurain and company while sitting in our little flat in Kilburn all those years ago.
That wasn’t the only moment from that Sunday afternoon that will always stay with me. We are on the front, all eight of us from Sky, with Ca
v sitting behind me at the back of the string as he is going for the sprint. We join the circuit, along the Rue de Rivoli, take a left down through the tunnel and out into the bright sunshine at the exit into the Place de la Concorde. I’m hearing the crowd for the first time, seeing the wall of British flags. It’s phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal; as the noise hits us we start riding a decent tempo across the Place de la Concorde towards the Champs-Elysées.
I’m taken back to my first sight of the Tour. I’m standing on the railings just before the kilometre-to-go kite on the entrance to the square, with my mother and my brother, watching them all go past. It’s 25 July 1993; I remember spotting Miguel Indurain in the yellow jersey, Gianni Bugno in the rainbow jersey of world champion. We’d come over from London for the weekend, gone up the Eiffel Tower on the Saturday, gone to see the Tour on the Sunday.
Nineteen years later, we pedal up the Champs-Elysées, bouncing on the cobbles, past the finish line, past the stands, up to the turn at the top in front of the Arc de Triomphe. I know my family is there in the stands on the right; Cath has told me, and that morning at the hotel in Chartres we made sure a pair of little yellow Pinarellos were ready for Bella and Ben to ride with me on the victory parade down the Champs. As we make the U-turn, the wall of sound from the Brits when I come into sight round the bend is unbelievable. It’s quiet as the first seven riders from Sky take the bend and then when the Brits see me in the yellow jersey the noise comes up at me and wallops me in the face. Amazing. I’m getting goose pimples. And then of course the attacks start, I’m thrust back to reality, and that’s it. Time to start concentrating: we have got a job to do for Cav.
Bradley Wiggins: My Time Page 20