by John Deering
Dave Brailsford had surely achieved all that he could in masterminding this unbelievable return, all under the banner of a drug-free culture and public money. Where could he go from here?
STAGE 10:
Mâcon–Bellegarde-sur-Valserine, 194.5km
Wednesday, 11 July 2012
The Tour de France start village is like a massive, moveable country town on market day. All the various farmers, producers, traders and hangers-on gather and business is talked. Or to be more accurate, business is hinted at and skirted round. A rider will chat to a journalist about how he is feeling, what he thinks the rest of the race holds, and where he hopes to be plying his trade next year, strictly off the record. An older rider will talk to a younger rider about the new team he’s heading to and whether the younger man would like to join him there, strictly off the record. A younger rider will talk to a retired rider now in management about whether there might be room on his team next season, strictly off the record. A rider in his thirties will speak to an agent of his acquaintance about contract values and where he might be expected to get the best deal for the following year, strictly off the record.
But the real business is done on the rest day. These days, the Tour de France has two rest days, one more than in former times. It was one of the changes instituted in the wake of successive drug scandals in an effort to make the race more manageable without recourse to illegal assistance, along with a promise not to hold any more back-to-back 250km mountain stages with eight climbs a day and that kind of thing.
Most professional cycling teams follow a three-fold programme, meaning that they can have riders competing in up to three different events simultaneously. This means that there are few occasions when the entire hierarchy of the sport is gathered together at one time. When they do, it’s more often than not at one of the large one-day classics that litter the spring and autumn calendars. There’s little time to talk at these races as teams jet in, race and jet out again.
The Tour de France is therefore the most productive in terms of talking shops. The riders spend hours alongside each other every day, and though they’re racing, there is often time for a few words between friends or for new faces to get to know each other. This will often develop into lifelong friendship, as in the early days of the Anglo revolution, when English speakers would seek each other out for a bit of company in an alien environment. Or even a long-held antipathy, like the one that defined the ‘relationship’ between peers Lance Armstrong and Robbie McEwen. Lance would allegedly make childish jokes about the Australian for the benefit of his many sycophantic followers, while McEwen would respond with equal maturity that the Texan should ‘Shut yer mouth before I do it for yer’.
All sorts of banter goes on. But the real business is talked on the rest day. With all the riders, managers, agents and press gathered together in a surreal bubble that stays self-contained yet transports itself hundreds of kilometres daily, it is simply too good an opportunity to be missed.
The press pack on the Tour de France is well named. It can often resemble a pack of dogs scrabbling over scraps. Many of the writers here are freelance, travelling, eating and sleeping as cheaply as possible while desperately trying to pick up ‘exclusives’ to sell through their meticulously managed network of media outlets. No rumour is too outlandish, no rivalry too childish, no scandal too petty to report. In the face of such pressure, it’s hardly surprising that so many riders stick to platitudes and clichés in their interviews.
On a ride with Team Sky in the spring, I found myself alongside the Spanish cobble specialist, Juan Antonio Flecha. For twenty minutes I tried to chat about cycling with him as he politely and not unkindly rebuffed my attempts to get him to open up with smiling monosyllabic answers and apologies for poor English. It was only when the subject turned to football and the forthcoming Champions League showdown between Chelsea and Barcelona that he sprang into life, speculating at length (and in word-perfect English) about the game, the coach Pep Guardiola’s supposed move between the two clubs and what the future held for both teams. It was a fascinating insight, not just into the mind of a true Catalan football nut, but also into the defence mechanisms of a professional cyclist in today’s media-driven goldfish bowl.
On the rest day following Bradley Wiggins’s imperious time trial win in Besançon, Team Sky are the subject of three main topics of speculation. One might be forgiven for thinking that the talk would be about Brad’s serene progression into the yellow jersey, however, the themes are: a) Chris Froome’s supposed unhappiness at playing second fiddle to his leader, b) Mark Cavendish’s supposed unhappiness at playing second fiddle to his leader, and c) Vincenzo Nibali declaring that he is not scared of Team Sky and will attack at every opportunity.
Needless to say, Chris Froome hasn’t actually said that he is unhappy, any more than the World Champion has shouted his desire to leave from the rooftops, but it’s something to write about. Nibali used his Liquigas-Cannondale team’s obligatory rest day press conference to issue the perfunctory rallying cry in a perfectly normal way that became twisted into a perceived slight on Team Sky bullying tactics by the time it made it to the papers.
Elsewhere, Brad was photographed drinking coffee and reading L’Équipe. Frankly, they could have cut his head out and plonked it on to any other rest day photograph of any Tour leader over the past thirty years. Fortunately, he didn’t succumb to the English cyclist’s bane, the readily proffered bowler hat and umbrella as props for this picture. The man has his own style, thank you very much. As if those sideburns weren’t enough to demonstrate that.
An old teammate of Brad’s, former British Champion Matt Stephens, recalls his first rest day as a young rider on a stage race: ‘It was the Milk Race. I can’t remember where the rest day was, but I had it all planned out: a bit of shopping at the local mall, ten-pin bowling. Then the DS came in and said, “Right, get your kit on, we’re going for a ride.” A ride! I couldn’t believe it.’
It’s true. Those outside the sport are always perplexed by the idea of the rest day ride, and many inside it, too. Like 4,000km in three weeks isn’t enough; they need to go for a spin on their day off. But it’s an essential part of keeping the blood flowing, the legs turning, the muscles working. Team Sky and many of the other teams have taken this to the next logical level by encouraging their riders to warm down after stages, too, meaning that many post-race interviews are now conducted while the stars turn the pedals on static trainers underneath an awning attached to the team bus.
Rolling out of Mâcon the following morning, the remaining members of the peloton are actually glad of those few gentle miles around the town the day before. There is a feeling of solidity around the race now that the first act has unfolded and the French have managed to plant a flag in home soil with Thibaut Pinot’s weekend win. There are also fewer riders choking up the road: Tony Martin has flown home to let his broken wrist heal up before the Olympic Time Trial, one of 23 riders who began the prologue the weekend before last who are no longer with us as we hit the halfway point between Liège and Paris. Perhaps today will be the day when the crashes finally relent and this race settles down at last.
Today’s breakaway group is a large one, with perennial escape-junkies like Thomas Voeckler, Jens Voigt and David Millar swelling the numbers. Intriguingly, Liquigas-Cannondale wunderkind Peter Sagan has snuck into it, too. It’s unlikely that his partners in the enterprise will want to tow him to the finish just to see him trample them in a sprint, so they will go hell for leather over the climbs to try and unhitch the beefy Slovakian.
That’s exactly what happens over the day’s biggest climb, the testing 17km Col du Grand Colombier. Wiggins is unsurprisingly coming under some pressure of his own, but he is comfortable with Edvald Boasson Hagen and Richie Porte marshalling the race and Chris Froome, as ever, riding shotgun. Two men in the top three is an intimidating sight for Team Sky’s rivals, especially when they’re surrounded by such competent support. Nevertheless, Vincen
zo Nibali is true to his word and launches his much trailed attack as the race passes over the top of the climb.
It’s here that Liquigas-Cannondale’s plan starts to take shape. As their leader distances the peloton on the narrow, twisting descent using a lot of skill and even more nerve, he is closing on his teammate, Sagan, dropped from the lead group. On the flat, with Nibali’s lead over the yellow jersey group reaching around a minute, they’re a fearsome duo and they set about their work in earnest.
Sean Yates sends the word forward to his troops: don’t panic. The Team Sky mantra has served them well and will continue to do so. The men in black, white and blue settled into a steady pursuit of the elusive Italian and his powerful lieutenant. If the shape of the stage had been like Sunday’s into Porrentruy, Liquigas-Cannondale would have really had Team Sky on the ropes. But Yates, Rogers and Wiggins were all aware that not only was it further to the finish from the big climb than Sunday, there was another shorter hill punctuating the route. This hill, the Col de Richemond, proved to be Nibali’s Calvary, as his bigger teammate faltered on the slopes and Team Sky reeled them in. A scare for the jersey, but no more than that, and all dealt with smoothly and capably by Brad and his boys.
Thomas Voeckler is France’s most popular cyclist. Two long spells in the yellow jersey – the first as an unheard-of rider in Armstrong’s long shadow, the second just last year – propelled him into public sight, but it is his do-or-die commitment that has given him a slot in their hearts. This year has been difficult for him, with tendonitis putting his Tour place in jeopardy right up to Liège and his Europcar team coming under scrutiny from the doping enforcement agencies. Today is the day he puts that in the shade with a ride of incredible persistence, attacking again and again, receiving no hope from his breakaway companions. They’re all dangerous riders, men like Michele Scarponi, Luis Leon Sanchez and Jens Voigt, and all capable of taking the stage for themselves. Just when it looks like Voeckler has punched himself out of contention, he finds the resilience to go again, catching Jens Voigt on the long drag to the finish, resisting all other attempts to better him, and using his ungainly style to grapple a huge gear all the way to the line. France is in raptures: two out of the last three stages, their hero a winner again, and now the wearer of the polka dot jersey of meilleur grimpeur, too.
Wiggins reveals just how far the team is prepared to go to ensure the don’t-panic ethos is carried all the way to Paris: ‘We were prepared to lose the jersey if need be to Scarponi who was the best placed up there. This is about being in yellow in Paris and if that means sacrificing the next days and keeping the boys back a bit . . .’
Nibali, Evans and Van Den Broeck are clearly the true danger men for Team Sky, even to the extent that they are prepared to let a Giro d’Italia podium finisher like Scarponi ‘borrow’ the jersey. ‘We do have to gamble a little bit here and we can’t just chase everything that moves,’ explains the leader.
Wiggins has clearly got under the skin of his Liquigas-Cannondale rival Vincenzo Nibali. After chasing him down on the Col de Richemond, Wiggins tracked the Italian all the way to the finish line and shot him a glance as they crossed the finish line. After earlier telling the press that he was ‘not impressed’ by Wiggins, Nibali went further after his attempts to unseat the yellow jersey had come to naught in Bellegarde-sur-Valserine. ‘When we crossed the line, Bradley turned and looked at me,’ Nibali said. ‘If he wants to be a great champion, he needs to have a bit of respect for his adversaries. Sometimes turning around and looking into your face is an insult.’
Team Sky will have to continue to use their judgement as to how much danger any move represents every day. Tomorrow will be a massive test for that: a mountain top finish in the high Alps. Can Bradley Wiggins demonstrate that his discomfort on stages like this has been consigned to the dustbin of history once and for all? If not, all the hard work carried out so far by Team Sky will be like so many flies crashing into windscreens.
The best laid plans of mice and men . . .
TO DESCRIBE BRADLEY WIGGINS’S relationship with his father as complicated would be like saying that Ayrton Senna was good at driving. It’s undoubtedly true, but only begins to scratch at the surface.
Garry Wiggins was trouble. Sometimes it surrounded him and followed him; often it was of his own creation. Being single-minded and resolute must have been admirable preconditions to leaving behind a provincial life in Morwell, Victoria, to ride a bike for a living in Europe. Less admirable was his willingness to leave behind a wife and a baby daughter to do so.
One wouldn’t want to assume too much about a man’s character by looking at his actions in isolation, but by leaving his new wife, Linda, and his son, Bradley, before the boy was two years old, Garry invites negative speculation. To discover that he went on to abandon a third wife, Fiona, and a third child, Madison, in Australia nearly twenty years later is a depressing confirmation that Bradley Wiggins’s father was an irresolute, irresponsible man.
Some might argue that his attempts to reconcile with his estranged son in 1997 via a long-distance phone call represented a worthy attempt to put his past behind him and start afresh. Others would say that such an act was that of a selfish man who wanted a part of his biological offspring’s success for himself, despite having had no influence whatsoever on his upbringing or having made any attempt to support him during those missing years. Whatever the motivation, Bradley decided to try to maintain a friendship of sorts with his father from that point on and to see if he could understand the man who had brought him into this world.
Bradley had not grown up in denial of his father. Linda had been careful not to let his opinion of his dad be clouded with prejudice. She had told him all about his dad’s exciting and slightly misty career as a track rider in Belgium and Europe. He was aware of his father’s exploits without ever taking a massive interest in cycling as a kid, and it was only now that he was beginning to appreciate what that lifestyle would have entailed.
The irregular distant friendship between two men generations and continents apart drifted along with occasional phone calls, Garry usually reminding his son how good a rider he had been and offering the occasional congratulations, as when Brad became World Junior Pursuit Champion a year or so after that first call. It was to be 1999 when the two would meet for the first time since a bizarre trip to London Zoo seventeen years earlier on his one and only visit to see his son after his break-up with Linda. Brad left a GB training camp in Australia to have lunch with his father and two half-sisters he had never met: Shannon, a little older than Brad and with a life of her own into which her father had also crashed, and Madison, the little girl Garry had fathered with his current partner, Fiona.
It must have been an unsettling encounter to say the least, a family group where nobody knows each other. Tensions were already running high between Garry and Shannon, largely because he had walked back into her life after twenty years and expected to give her away at her forthcoming wedding, something Shannon was understandably not keen on. Brad stayed detached, trying to take in this strange situation and figure out how to proceed.
When Brad decisively called his father a year later and offered to come and stay for a few weeks in advance of his pre-Olympic training camp, he didn’t expect Garry’s life to have changed as much as it had. The attempts at reconciliation with Shannon and himself had been during a good period of steady work and a committed relationship, but everything had begun to unravel shortly after that odd luncheon date.
Brad felt that he might regret never having taken the opportunity to get to know Garry better, and he certainly had a good snapshot of how life was in the Wiggins Senior household. It involved a lot of beer, a lot of self-pity, a lot of anger and not much else, unless somebody was foolish enough to get in his way. By the end of three weeks, the nineteen-year-old Wiggins had had a bellyful of the 48-year-old one. He maintained the distance that yawned between them despite his father’s attempts to claim him as his son after all this ti
me, and they parted on distant, if not hostile, terms.
Garry occasionally made it over to Europe for a look at his old stamping ground and on occasion caught up with Brad at the Ghent Six-Day race. He would invariably be holding court at a bar, fuelled with beer supplied by his son and surrounded by listeners only too happy to hear tales of his unsurpassable genius as a track rider and drink the beer he so generously gave out via his son’s wallet. He would delight in telling them about Bradley’s shortcomings as a cyclist and expound upon the reasons why he could never match his old dad’s abilities.
It wasn’t what you’d call your typical father-son relationship.
Brad was woken by a phone call in the early hours of a January morning in 2008. He had been training in Manchester as part of his Beijing preparations and so was sleeping in his own bed for once. He got out of bed leaving Cath sleeping, wondering who it could be. There had been drunken late-night calls from Garry in the past, but not for years. A chain of events and long-distance calls that night revealed a sad truth: Garry Wiggins was dead. The truth was hazy, but it appeared that he had been drinking at a house party and got into a fight with the host. He had left the party on his feet, but been found a little way off at the roadside a few hours later, dead from a blow to the head. Whether the injury had been sustained in the fight or when he fell was unclear, but those were the facts. He was just 55.
Bradley talked to Shannon and Garry’s sister, Glenda, in Australia. He made plans to go out for the funeral but then changed his mind. It was time to put his father and their tentative steps towards reconciliation behind him. He should be concentrating on his own family – his lovely wife Cath, first child Ben and the recently arrived Isabella – none of whom Garry had ever met.