by Chris Froome
Alex came with us to Martinelli’s hotel room in Madrid, where we discussed the offer. He spoke in Italian and the time I’d spent learning the language never seemed more valuable. I translated parts of the conversation for Noz. Martinelli said Astana would pay me more than double the annual salary Sky had offered.
From a business perspective, Alex hadn’t been wrong: Sky had no idea what my market value had become.
What I liked about Astana was that they wanted me as leader – no ifs or buts. They would pay me a leader’s salary and I would have to justify it, but I was cool with that.
There were minuses too. Astana were a Kazakh-backed team and though I’d overheard some dinner conversations, I couldn’t tell whether they spoke Kazakh or Russian. Either way, I didn’t fancy my chances if I had to spend a year or two with words in Cyrillic script stuck to my handlebars. A switch to Astana was obviously going to be a challenge for me. Vinokourov was central to the team and, like Riis, he too had a past. Also, Lance Armstrong had ridden for them in 2010 and, though we were still a year away from the 2012 USADA revelations, I didn’t see the Lance association as a plus.
Still, I appreciated their offer and it showed me that Alex’s reservations about Sky’s offer were justified.
Alex then spoke with Garmin-Cervélo. They were interested but they had already spent most of their budget for 2012 and they offered a deal whereby I would get one figure for the first year and a significantly improved sum for years two and three. Jonathan Vaughters called me a few times and said all the right things. He wanted a new leader and would build the team around me. This was the single thing I most wanted to hear: a chance to be leader with a team built to support me. But their first offer was so far below Astana’s that it was hard to seriously consider it. Alex went back to them and they said, ‘Okay, what we’re offering Chris in year one, we will triple for years two and three.’
From Madrid, I sent Dave a text: ‘I love the team because it has the right approach and I want to stay. But you have to meet these other offers.’
Money wasn’t the only issue.
I also wanted Dave to agree that I would have the chance to win the Tour de France, or at least not to be stuck in a system where I couldn’t. Finishing 2nd in Spain after doing so much work for Brad had given me confidence. Then when other teams proposed contracts that showed they wanted me as their leader, that made me think: why shouldn’t I go for the Tour de France?
Dave listened and said that this worked perfectly for Sky because the team wanted to go to the race with two riders going for GC. It was too much of a risk with just one, he said. Look what had happened with Brad at this year’s Tour, and then at the Vuelta. He said how good it was for the team that when Brad cracked, I was there to pick it up. Dave was enthusiastic and convincing and, though I wanted reassurance, I also wanted to stay with the team.
What I remember him saying was this: ‘If you stay with us, we will basically guarantee to you that you go to the Tour and ride for GC.’
In hindsight I can see that Dave was being clever. I thought what he told me meant that I could go to the Tour de France and have my chance to win it. But he didn’t actually say this. Instead he spoke of two guys riding for GC, with one being the designated leader and the other riding as his back-up. If anything happened to the leader, the second guy would take over.
Dave’s approach was rather like a character’s in Through the Looking Glass: ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
My understanding was that I would go to the Tour as a protected rider but the details were never teased out. Dave’s words would actually mean just what he chose them to mean.
We talked about the salary and by now he was aware that other teams had offered far more. He wanted to know if I would accept a five-year contract. From his point of view, Sky were increasing my salary and giving me the security of a five-year deal. From my point of view, they were offering much less than other teams and I wanted a contract that reflected being a leader, rather than a domestique. It was getting stressful and I sent Dave a long and quite strong message saying there would be no more going back and forth. I also said that if that was the final offer, I was going elsewhere.
He called me soon after that, wanting to know which teams had made offers and for how much.
‘Dave, it doesn’t work like that. I’m not going to tell you which teams so you can just undercut them, knowing I want to stay with you. You need to tell me what you are prepared to give me to stay. If that isn’t good enough, I will leave. The ball is in your court.’
To help him understand the seriousness of the situation I sent him a message saying there had been an offer of more than double for three years. We both knew I wanted to stay with the team and, to do that, I was prepared to accept less than was available elsewhere. So in that message I told him I would meet him halfway.
‘This doesn’t need to be difficult. You need to just tell me, “yes” or “no”. I’m not looking for a five-year contract. I’m looking for three years with these numbers. You accept or you don’t.’
Seconds later the phone rang. It was Dave. There was emotion in his voice, a tone that suggested he’d been upset by my message. In his eyes I’d given him what amounted to an ultimatum.
‘Are you telling me that if we don’t pay you that, you are going to leave?’
He sounded stern. I’d had enough though.
‘Yes. Quite simply, yes. It doesn’t have to be personal, Dave. You know what I’m looking for. Take it or leave it.’
‘Okay. Okay then.’
And he hung up.
That could be the end of it, I thought. I’d pushed him too far. Maybe I’d overestimated my value. Still, other teams thought I was worth it. In my message to Dave I’d said he had forty-eight hours to decide because at that point I was signing a piece of paper – either their piece of paper or somebody else’s.
Throughout those days in Madrid Noz was great and a calming influence. I didn’t know why Dave had stopped negotiating through Alex, but by dealing directly with me, he made it my issue. I’d never been in this situation and had no experience of negotiating a contract. I was playing for very high stakes. What was clear, however, was that teams were prepared to pay a lot of money for General Classification riders that did not have dodgy pasts. Luckily for me, there weren’t too many riders out there.
So that was it. Forty-eight hours to decide.
I quietly hoped Dave would come back and say my terms were okay. But while we waited, Noz and I went through the alternatives. Sitting in a Japanese restaurant with a writing pad, we made two columns – pros and cons. With the Astana money, I could create my own little world inside the team. I could probably get Bobby Julich on board, ask them to hire a couple of riders I knew, maybe even guys I’d already worked with, to create a group around me. It was definitely the harder option but it could be an interesting project.
It was easier to get my head round joining Garmin. There I would have the team’s full backing, with English speakers all around me, and guys who seemed to get along well. Saxo wasn’t as attractive. Part of me thought that Contador had become the Lance Armstrong of the new era – the main man but also under a cloud as the UCI and WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) were appealing the decision of the Spanish authorities to exonerate him following the clenbuterol positive.
As it happened, Bobby was in England and from what I could tell Sky had convened a summit involving the team’s top people to decide whether or not to keep me. Dave would be presiding, that was for sure, with Tim Kerrison, probably Rod Ellingworth, Carsten Jeppesen and Fran Millar. Bobby called me and I sensed that he had been asked by Dave to find out what I was thinking and whether or not I might actually leave to join another team.
I was non-committal.
‘There isn’t much to say, Bobby. I have given them my demands – they either want me or they don’t want me.’
He pushed me a bit on which oth
er team I might think of going to but I didn’t want to get into that. Bobby was in a tough place because we had worked together and got on well, and when Dave told him he was increasing my salary, Bobby had thought that was a good deal for me. It was good but not the best.
Dave had asked him if he thought I was worth more and Bobby told him honestly that he didn’t think I was. Bobby knew the team needed to invest more in coaching and development and believed the difference between what I had been offered and what I was demanding could be put to better use.
Bobby had no idea about the alternatives and I couldn’t tell him at that point because he also had a duty to the team, so I wound up the conversation.
‘Listen, Bobby, we’ll catch up and have a coffee when you are back from the UK. The way I left it was that Dave knows what I want and I’m waiting to hear back.’
‘Okay, Froomey. I hope you know what you’re doing.’
After those couple of days in Madrid with Noz, I travelled back to Monaco and was out training when Dave called.
‘We are going to accept your offer, so let’s get this contract done.’
I was pleased and relieved. I immediately called up Robbie Nilsen in South Africa and told him Sky had agreed to give me what I’d asked for and that I would like him to help me draw up the contract.
Robbie knew what I wanted: I had to be guaranteed freedom to ride for General Classification in the Tour. They were the words I used. This would become quite a discussion point. We took the team’s first draft of the contract and as it was just a standard contract we amended it to include a clause that would formally recognize my right to fight for the yellow jersey in the Tour.
To an outsider, unfamiliar with how teams work in cycling, it probably seems bizarre that a rider would have to persuade his team to allow him to try to win the biggest race in the sport. Isn’t that supposed to be the whole idea of competition? That you try to win?
If only it were so simple. From Dave’s point of view, the team’s chances of winning any stage race, and especially one as tough as the Tour de France, are better if there is one designated leader that everyone else supports.
And he had Brad to consider.
Endless toing and froing between Robbie and Sky’s people concluded with a clause that stated the team would support me in my ambitions in the Tour de France. In my eyes, that was strong enough: my ambition was to win the Tour and the team had officially agreed I would be supported in that aim.
I couldn’t be too insistent with Dave because I knew I had to prove I could back up the Vuelta performance with a similar effort in the Tour. They still saw inconsistency riding in my slipstream. Never at any point in the negotiations did I say to the team that I could win the 2012 Tour, which would have been presumptuous. But I was saying I needed the freedom to try.
When Noz and I spoke about it I told him I thought I could make it to the top five in the Tour. The opposition was going to be much stronger than the Vuelta, but with the backing of the team, a top-five placing was attainable. Uppermost in my mind was the fact that I’d lost the Vuelta by seconds to Cobo after losing minutes working for Brad. That was one Grand Tour I had lost because I’d had to ride for someone else and I didn’t want a second.
When I compared myself to Brad I knew that even though I’d beaten him in the Vuelta time trial I couldn’t be guaranteed to do the same in the Tour; I couldn’t count on it. In the mountains I would have the upper hand, but would I gain more in the mountains than I would lose in the time trials? Who knew? It was simply a question of having the right to find out.
After the Vuelta, we went to Copenhagen for the World Championships. On a circuit made for sprinters the GB team performed really well to control the race. Our aim was to give Mark Cavendish the chance to win the rainbow jersey. He didn’t let us down. I would spend a year with Cav on Team Sky and never really get to know him, but I would come to understand that when the team worked for him that was when he was most likely to win.
A couple of days after the Worlds had ended Brad decided to speak publicly about his determination to win the following year’s Tour de France. I was out training when I heard, and shortly afterwards I got a phone call from my brother Jono.
‘What’s Bradley Wiggins going on about? I thought Brailsford agreed you would go to the Tour and have your chance? Brad’s talking like he’s the only Sky rider for the Tour.’
Jono was pissed, and so was I. Brad had spoken as if he were the Team Sky leader for the Tour. I called up Dave.
‘This isn’t what we talked about. We said I would be allowed to go for the Tour.’
‘Yeah, yeah, this won’t stop you at all. Like I explained, we need two riders going for the GC. We will go there with Plan A and Plan B.’
At that point we didn’t even know the route for the race, so we didn’t know how many mountaintop finishes or how many time trials there would be. For all we knew, it might be a route that suited me far more than it suited Brad, but Brad wasn’t waiting to find out. He was already proclaiming that he was going to win next year’s Tour.
He had probably heard about my contract negotiations and my insistence upon a clause about next year’s Tour. I saw this as Brad putting a stake in the ground to mark his territory.
What he had avoided saying was that the team now had two guys who could go for GC in the Tour.
I’d had so many conversations about this with my friend and lawyer, Robbie Nilsen. We had wanted the word ‘guaranteed’ in the contract but they had wanted something less binding, and in the end it was agreed that the team would ‘support me in my ambitions in the Tour de France’.
By going public at the time he did, Brad created the impression that the team had only one guy with the ambition to win. I felt like I was being told to lie down, chill out, enjoy your new contract and forget about riding GC in the Tour.
I hadn’t really analysed what Dave meant by Plan A and Plan B. Instead, I had a vague sense that Brad would have his chance to take time on everyone in the time trials while I would be allowed to go for it in the mountains. And the stronger guy would end up as team leader.
Before any discussion of how the team would use us, I felt we first needed to know how many mountaintop finishes there would be. If there were several, the Tour would be a difficult one for Brad. If there were not so many, but there were two long individual time trials, that would tilt the balance in his favour. With two or three mountaintop finishes, and the team’s support, I believed I could aim for the podium in Paris.
With the team’s support? That was a big question. Even then, at a time when I was getting a very big salary increase, I wasn’t sure the team saw me as someone to lead the Tour de France charge. They knew that with a little more support I probably could have won the Vuelta but I would still have to prove to them that it was more than a one-off.
In the back of my mind there lurked a hazy fear which I didn’t properly recognize at the time: might the team have been thinking that they needed to keep me because if they let me go to another team I could be the guy that would beat Brad?
After the season ended we had a team get-together in Milan. Mark Cavendish and Bernie Eisel, who had both recently come on board, were there. We had a few meetings over the two days and on the last evening we all went out for a night on the town. Brad was in Milan too and though we hadn’t been close before, there was a new tension there which hadn’t previously existed.
Now we had a reason to feel we were against each other.
The ink on the new contract was hardly dry and already I was unsure of my position. Salary-wise, I had been given a great deal, but I had the sense the team thought this should keep me happy. You can go for anything you want, Froomey, so long as Brad doesn’t want it.
The tough conversations that needed to take place never happened. This wasn’t the team’s fault but mine. On the bike I can fight. Off the bike I am paralysed by passivity and politeness. I’m not confident enough, not assertive enough.
B
lessed are the meek for they shall continue to ride for Brad.
Part Three
THE TOUR DE FRANCE
21
I am in my room at the Hotel Van Der Valk in Verviers, a Belgian city halfway between Liège and the German border. It’s the last day of June 2012 and, man, I feel ready. Tomorrow is Le Grand Départ of my second Tour de France and though I don’t often swear, let me just say that I feel very fucking ready.
This journey back to the Tour, four years after the first, well, there are tortoises in the Masai Mara that could have got here quicker. That’s okay because I know how much progress there’s been. That first Tour came a few weeks after my mother died. I prepared on a mountain bike while home for Mum’s funeral in Nairobi. Back then, I knew so little about what was involved.
Now I’m part of Team Sky, the world’s best team, and I’m coming back to the Tour understanding the race in a new way. Once I wasn’t certain I could do anything in a race as competitive as the Tour. Now I know I can compete – I’m just not sure if the team will allow me to. It’s not that they don’t like me but Brad Wiggins is the Big Kahuna here. The team directory has no listing for Kahuna Number Two or Deputy Big Kahuna.
If I don’t keep that thought on a tight leash, it will drive me crazy.
I want Dave Brailsford and the team to know that after a difficult first half to the season, I feel in the best form of my career. More than that, I want them to know that not only can I be the last man in the mountains with Brad but that I can stay with him every day. When there’s an opportunity, I’d like to have the freedom to see what I can do.
Does that make me a bad person? This is meant to be a sport, correct? If you’re good enough, you get the chance to win. However, I’m not sure the team wants to have this debate. Definitely not on the eve of the Tour de France.