Bradley Wiggins: My Time Read online

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  List of Illustrations

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Foreword by Robert Millar

  Prologue: Open Road

  Part One: Down And Out In London And Manchester

  1. The Planner’s Dream Goes Wrong

  2. Rock Bottom

  3. Time For Truth

  4. Back On Track

  5. Breakthrough

  6. Brothers In Arms

  Part Two: Little By Little

  7. Tearing Up Tradition

  8. The Midas Touch

  9. The Wingmen

  10. Working Class Hero

  11. Back In The Madhouse

  12. In The Firing Line

  13. The Other Team

  14. Under Attack

  15. Life In Yellow

  16. Open Road: II

  Part Three: My Time

  17. An Englishman In Paris

  18. London Calling

  19. The Rollercoaster

  20. What Next?

  Picture Section

  Acknowledgements

  Appendix: The Golden Year

  Index

  Copyright

  * * *

  About the Book

  On 22 July 2012 Bradley Wiggins made history as the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France. Ten days later at the London Olympic Games he won the time trial to become his country’s most decorated Olympian. In an instant ‘Wiggo’, the kid from Kilburn, was a national hero.

  Two years previously, however, Wiggins had been staring into the abyss. His much-hyped attempt to conquer the 2010 Tour de France had ended in public humiliation. Poor results and indifferent form left him facing the sack from Team Sky. And then he was hit with the tragic news of the death of his granddad, George, the man who had raised him as a young boy. At rock bottom, Wiggins had to reach deep inside himself and find the strength to fight his way back.

  Outspoken, honest, intelligent and fearless, Wiggins has been hailed as the people’s champion. In MY TIME he tells the story of the remarkable journey that led him from his lowest ebb to win the world’s toughest race. He opens up about the personal anguish that has driven him on and what it’s like behind the scenes at Team Sky: the brutal training regimes, the sacrifices and his views on his teammates and rivals. He talks too about his anger at the spectre of doping that pursues his sport, how he dealt with the rush of taking Olympic gold and above all what it takes to be the greatest.

  * * *

  About the Author

  Bradley Wiggins grew up in Kilburn in London. He won the World Junior Pursuit title before going on to win seven Olympic medals including four gold medals spanning four games, and seven World Track Championship titles. In 2012 he became the first Briton to win the Tour de France, a feat that Sir Chris Hoy described as ‘the greatest sporting achievement’ by a British athlete. He was awarded the OBE in the 2005 New Year’s honours list and the CBE in 2009. He currently lives in the north-west of England with his wife, Cath, and their two children, Ben and Isabella.

  * * *

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  1. Bradley Wiggins with his father, Gary Wiggins; childhood photographs (all courtesy of Maureen Cousins)

  2. Racing as a junior (both Maureen Cousins)

  3. A lap of honour with Paul Manning, Chris Newton and Bryan Steel after winning bronze in the team pursuit at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 (Pool JO/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images); the Madison with Rob Hayles at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004 (Greg Wood/AFP/Getty); after winning gold in the individual pursuit at the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 (Cameron Spencer/Getty)

  4. Riding in the 2010 Tour de France (Bryn Lennon/Getty)

  5. Training with Team Sky in 2010 (Bryn Lennon/Getty)

  6. The peloton at the start of the 2011 Tour de France (Joel Saget/Getty)

  7. Mark Cavendish after winning the road race at the 2011 Road World Championships in Copenhagen (Press Association); leading out at the road race (Graham Watson); the 2011 Vuelta podium with Juan José Cobo and Chris Froome (Tim De Waele/Corbis)

  8. Preparing to race at the 2012 Tour de France (Scott Mitchell)

  9. The kit (Scott Mitchell)

  10. Greeting fans arriving at the stage start; getting in the mind-set to race; with Mark Cavendish (all Scott Mitchell)

  11. After winning the yellow jersey (Scott Mitchell)

  12. In the team bus; waiting at the start in the peloton (both Scott Mitchell)

  13. With the press (Scott Mitchell)

  14. Toasting winning the yellow jersey with the team at dinner; contemplating in the hotel bathroom later that night (both Scott Mitchell)

  15. Bradley Wiggins (Scott Mitchell)

  16. A training ride in Majorca in 2012; in yellow at Paris–Nice in 2012 (both Bryn Lennon/Getty)

  17. Encouragement from fans during the 2012 Tour de France (Tim De Waele/Corbis); flags lining the route (Scott Mitchell)

  18. Punching the air after winning the final time trial (Bryn Lennon/Getty)

  19. Riding into Paris with Sky teammates during the final stage (Scott Mitchell)

  20. Celebrating winning the Tour (Scott Mitchell); with wife, Cath, in Paris (Tim De Waele/Corbis)

  21. The road race at the 2012 London Olympic Games (Visionhaus/Corbis); ready to race in the individual time trial (Carl de Souza/Getty)

  22. Racing in the individual time trial (Tim De Waele/Corbis); celebrating winning the gold medal (Odd Andersen/Getty)

  23. On the podium during the victory ceremony at Hampton Court Palace (Alex Livesey/Getty)

  For Cath, Ben, Isabella, Mum, Nan, George and Ryan

  * * *

  FOREWORD by Robert Millar

  My first Tour de France was a muddle of feelings and emotions, but I did have one moment of clarity. I was hot, I was tired, and my lower limbs felt as if someone had filled them with lead. I wasn’t even certain where I was, all I knew was that it was a village somewhere in south-central France and there were about 60km to the finish that day. My main focus for the last hour had been the mosquito bite that had developed angrily on my heel, just where shoe and foot met. It was driving me crazy and I couldn’t work out if it actually hurt more than my legs. I knew it was my own fault as I had a habit of sticking one foot out of bed when I was trying to sleep and some enterprising biting insect had noticed the lack of citronella just where the rough skin starts and given me a souvenir for visiting his airspace. I looked up the road and saw we were temporarily leaving the countryside and entering a small piece of civilisation, slightly uphill on the way in meant slightly downhill on the way out, so for something to do I decided to move up a few places in the bunch. That might help me forget the mosquito bite.

  It was a typical French village where you could sense nothing much ever happened, but because the Tour de France was passing through they were having a typical French village fête day to celebrate our arrival. The Tricolore flew from the village hall, there was a bit of bunting, trestle tables with food, there was drinking, merriment and laughter. The whole village had turned out to greet us and they were enjoying themselves just like the mosquito had. I felt annoyed. And then on the right-hand side, just as we left the houses and headed back into the trees, I noticed an old woman sitting on a chair outside her door. Dressed all in black like old women in France tend to be, she must have been eighty if she was a day but she had a youthful twinkle in her eye and the world’s biggest smile. Her happiness was that complete happiness you have when you are eight and you are having a great time, but she must have been a grandmother – maybe even a great-grandmother. Through the no
ise I heard her say, ‘Allez les petits’ – go my little ones. To her we were her children, and I realised she was beaming with pride that we had come to see her. I knew then it was my duty not to disappoint her: I had to do my best, to be as good a Tour rider as I could be.

  There’s always a touch of theatre about each Tour de France; it may be a sporting competition but more often than not there’s human drama each day. There are hidden clues in the terminology that imply it’s as much a show as it is a bike race. The French call each day un étape, which when you translate it as they intended means part of a journey; in English each day is a stage which of course is a word that has little to do with travelling and much to do with the world of acting and performing. The outfits of the main players are appropriate to the entertainment world too. Something bright to distinguish the lead part, so a distinctive yellow jersey for the star of the show ensures everyone knows where to look and who to concentrate on. Then the other parts of the story fall into place: green for the envious one, red spots for the minstrel and white for the innocence of youth. It has all the ingredients to be the perfect sporting play acted out for three weeks in the perfect setting.

  To be part of the show you already have to be good – very good. And to play one of the main roles you need every ounce of your talent, every last drop of your passion, to use every piece of your history to your advantage, question every part of your commitment. The journey to Tour stardom is as much about understanding yourself as it is about preparing yourself for the physical and mental battle ahead: every aspect of your character and ability will be tested to the maximum. There’ll be times when emotionally you’ll be drained by the sacrifices. The selfishness involved will affect those around you and the mental preparations will have you asking questions of yourself that expose faults and nerves you didn’t want touching. There’ll be plenty of times when you step beyond your physical limit and have to reassess the whole adventure and yet it’s a journey you have a duty to travel if you get the opportunity.

  Bradley Wiggins’s arrival on cycling’s greatest stage hasn’t been a steady progression up the stairs to stand in the Parisian limelight. It has taken a certain time, considering the talent he possesses. Leaving the comfort of French teams and removing the crutches of his first home, track racing, forced him to change his ways. There have been dazzling highs but there have also been hesitations and desperate moments. As a career plan it has resembled a complex novel with some of the difficult passages as much his own doing as they were misfortune, but like all the best books it’s come good in the end.

  Over the following pages Bradley Wiggins takes you through the trials and tribulations, through the tears and the training that have seen him transformed from mere contender to stand on the Champs-Elysées as a Tour de France champion.

  What it took to be as good as he could be.

  Robert Millar

  November 2012

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  OPEN ROAD

  Saturday 21 July, 15:33 European Summer Time

  Rue de la Résistance, Bonneval

  Stage 19, 2012 Tour de France

  It is the last hour before the final time trial of the Tour de France, and I am within reach of my open road. In every race, that’s what I’m looking for: that sense of having clear space in front of me. That’s when I feel truly in control. That open road can be the moment in a summit finish in the mountains where my last teammate peels off the group and it’s all down to me; it can be the point where the strongmen in a stage race emerge and the fighting for position stops, or the moment when I have to come out of the jostling pack, and ramp the pace up so that Mark Cavendish can nail a finish sprint. That’s where the physical side takes over and all I have to do is turn the taps on full.

  The routine for this time trial is the same one I’ve built and perfected over fifteen years; as I go through it thoughts and images flash through my mind. These moments are ones you live so intensely, and it’s surprising what details stick. I can still see the sun coming through the one-way window of the team bus, and the woman standing outside the warm-up area. She’d been waiting for an autograph for a while, and I think she’d been there the day before, so I found a spare race number in my suitcase and asked the mechanic to take it over to her.

  I can remember every minute of every time trial in 2012. It is all so precisely timed. In each time trial, screens tick over the minutes in front of the turbo trainers where the team staff set up the fans to cool us down and the bottles of energy drinks. The first thing the staff do as soon as they arrive at the start area in the morning is to sync all the clocks with the start clock on the ramp. There’s no point in timing your warm-up using your watch. It might be five minutes fast, in which case you’d arrive at the start with eight minutes to go instead of three and be sitting around for too long; worst of all, if your watch is slow, you’d get there late.

  My routine counts back from the warm-up. In my head that’s when my race starts: the moment when I leave the bus and get on the turbo at precisely the right second. The warm-up starts exactly half an hour before I go down the ramp; if my start time is three minutes past three, I’ll get on the turbo at two thirty-three on the dot.

  I like to get to the bus early, soak up the atmosphere, chat with the mechanics, make sure everything’s OK with the bikes, chat through my warm-up with my trainer Tim Kerrison, make sure I know about fuelling and hydration, and then go and sit down and listen to some music. At this point we get taped up by the physios using Kinesio tape; it’s like putting on your armour before going into battle. Then it’s a bit of stretching in the back of the bus. Get the numbers on the suit, get changed, smear on the chammy cream, leave the suit unzipped, put a vest on.

  Every now and then little demons appear in my head. Something in my mind says: what if you puncture? What if the chain snaps? What if I lose two minutes? – silly little things like that. I try to put these worries to bed, but it’s a constant background noise. I’ve stopped thinking rationally.

  Half an hour before warm-up: I start listening to my playlist. It’s a dance-music mix that my former teammate Steve Cummings did for me a couple of years ago at the Tour of Lombardy. I always start listening to it at exactly the same time; any earlier and I begin getting into the zone too soon.

  Twenty minutes to warm-up: shoes on.

  Ten minutes to warm-up: lace them up.

  Zero hour: out of the bus and on to the turbo. My warm-up takes exactly twenty minutes. I’ve done it for fifteen years, the same ramping up in power. It’s like a test on the old Kingcycle, the rig they used at British Cycling in the 1990s. I push myself up to threshold and then I’m totally in my own world. I am in the zone.

  As I turn the pedals on the turbo trainer, people pass by but I see no one. Most of the time my eyes are closed. I’m going through the ride in my head: sitting on the start ramp, flying down off it. I’m constantly sensing what it’s going to feel like, imagining lying on the time-trial handlebars, or skis, as we call them.

  I always pick a power to ride at. If it’s 460, 470 watts, I’m imagining being there, at that power. In my head it’s feeling strong, flowing, everything’s working. It’s easy, I’m floating along, I’m gliding, it’s feeling great. I can sustain this feeling for up to an hour.

  Ten minutes to start: off the turbo, into the bus, have a piss; overshoes on, gloves on, wipe down, sit down for a couple of minutes. Calm down.

  Six minutes: Tim comes in. ‘Let’s go.’ Clip on visor, go down towards the cordoned-off area around the ramp, find a chair straight away; keep going through the start process in my head. This time I remember to turn the chair round to get away from the photographers’ flashbulbs. My eyes are closed under the visor but they annoyed me last time. Vincenzo Nibali, who is 3rd overall, is just starting.

  Three minutes: Chris Froome comes down the ramp; I go up the steps. I’m looking at him in the distance and the car following him, and as they get further and further out of sig
ht my mind gets really positive, really aggressive: I’m coming after you, I’ll be seeing that soon – that kind of feeling.

  Chris is my teammate but there are no teammates in time trialling: it’s you against the clock and you against everybody else. You are in your own little world from the moment you get on the bus in the morning. I’m concentrating and thinking it through and at that point I don’t give a monkey’s about anyone else in the team and what they’re going to do out there today.

  In this race on this specific day Chris is like the rest of them and he is my closest competitor. And I am going after him.

  One minute: clip into the pedals. Go to the starter. My directeur sportif Sean Yates is in the radio earpiece: ‘Come on, Brad, let’s go and get them.’ I don’t need reminding; I want to nail it.

  Five seconds: throw the body back on the bike; push back on to the guy holding the saddle as if my back wheel is locked into a start gate on the track.

  Three: deep breath in. Fill the lungs.

  Two: deep breath out.

  One: breathe in, deep as I can.

  Winning the Tour de France is one good ride away.

  Part One

  Down And Out In London And Manchester

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  THE PLANNER’S DREAM GOES WRONG

  IN THE LATE evening of 17 October 2010 I was sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Milan Malpensa airport, all alone with the best part of two bottles of red wine inside me. I had just climbed off in the Tour of Lombardy, a legendary one-day Classic and the last big race of the season. Lombardy had been a complete disaster with only one rider from the team finishing – I had called it a day after getting caught behind a number of crashes. It was a low-key end to several months of total disappointment and public humiliation. I had flopped at the Tour de France. I had gone through a personal crisis. The team hadn’t ridden well at the Tour of Britain, our big home race. It had been a tough first year for Team Sky, and the lowest point had come when the team pulled out of the Vuelta – the Tour of Spain – after the tragic death from septicaemia of our soigneur Txema González. A soigneur is the person who takes care of us on and off the bike, and Txema had looked after all of us at the Tour and the Giro d’Italia. He was a great guy, and his sudden death had hit us hard.