Bradley Wiggins: My Time (20 page)

It is only now that we have a much clearer idea of what was going on in the sport back then. Compared to today, it was a different era. Personally, I used to find it tough. You’d be trying to negotiate a contract, say £50,000 a year. I had two kids to worry about and a livelihood to earn, and all the while there were people beating me because they were doping. In 2007, for example, I remember telling the press after Vino tested positive that I had looked at his ride in the Albi time trial and thought there had to be something wrong. But you can’t voice those suspicions with no evidence. You can only see that it adds up if the rider eventually gets caught. At the time I had a chip on my shoulder as a result of that; I wasn’t shy of saying what I thought about doping because it directly affected my livelihood and through that the lives of my family.

After 2006 and 2007, the drugs tests began to work more efficiently, more guys were getting caught, the blood passport
came
in, and it got harder for people to dope. I’m not claiming cycling is out of the woods, but doping in the sport became less of a worry to me personally. That eventually coincided with my making a serious attempt to forge a career on the road, finally putting my mind completely to that side of it after all those years on the track. Once I started getting successful, the doping question was less important to me, because I was no longer getting beaten by people who would then go on and test positive, or who I would be wondering about. If there is a difference in my attitude now compared to back then, it’s that I’m more focused on what I am doing personally. I pay less attention to what’s going on outside my bubble because I’m not coming second to riders who dope. I worry about it less.

The important thing is that nothing has changed in where I stand morally. Nothing has changed about the reasons why I would never dope. In fact, the reasons why I would never use drugs have become far more important. It comes down to my family, and the life I have built for myself and how I would feel about living with the possibility of getting caught. I wrote it all in my last book back in 2008, and I still feel the same now. It’s just that I say it less. There is more attention on me, but that actually makes me more withdrawn, because I don’t feel comfortable in a leader’s role.

The question that needs to be asked is not why wouldn’t I take drugs, but why would I? I know exactly why I wouldn’t dope. To start with, I came to professional road racing from a different background to a lot of guys. The attitude to doping in the UK is different to on the Continent, where a rider like Richard Virenque can dope, be caught, be banned, come back
and
be a national hero. There is a different culture in British cycling. Britain is a country where doping is not morally acceptable. I grew up in the British environment, with the Olympic side of the sport as well as the Tour de France.

If I doped I would potentially stand to lose everything. It’s a long list. My reputation, my livelihood, my marriage, my family, my house. Everything I have achieved, my Olympic medals, my world titles, the CBE I was given. I would have to take my children to the school gates in a small Lancashire village with everyone looking at me, knowing I had cheated, knowing I had, perhaps, won the Tour de France but then been caught. I remember in 2007 throwing that Cofidis kit in the bin at that small airport where no one knew me, because I didn’t want any chance of being associated with doping. Then I imagine how it would be in a tiny community where everyone knows everyone.

It’s not just about me. I’ve always lived in the UK. All my friends in cycling are here, and my extended family. Cycling isn’t just about me and the Tour de France. My wife organises races in Lancashire. I have my own
sportif
, with people coming and paying £40 each to ride. If all that was built on sand, if I was deceiving all those people by doping, I would have to live with the knowledge it could all disappear just like that. Cath’s family have been in cycling for fifty years, and I would bring shame and embarrassment on them: my father-in-law works at British Cycling, and would never be able to show his face there again. It’s not just about me: if I doped it would jeopardise Sky – who sponsor the entire sport in the UK – Dave Brailsford and all he has done, and Tim Kerrison,
my
trainer. I would not want to end up sitting in a room with all that hanging on me, thinking, ‘Shit, I don’t want anyone to find out.’ That is not something I wish to live with, so doping would simply not be worth it.

The problem with the accusations is that they begin that whole process of undermining what I have achieved. That’s why I get angry about them.

This is only sport we are talking about. Sport does not mean more to me than all those other things I have. Winning the Tour de France at any cost is not worth the risk. That boils down to why I race a bike. I do it because I love it, and I love doing my best and working hard. I don’t do it for a power trip. At the end of the day, I’m a shy bloke looking forward to taking my son rugby training after the Tour, perhaps bumping into my lad’s hero Sam Tomkins. That thought in my head, what I would be able to do after the Tour, was what was keeping me going through those weeks. If I felt I had to take drugs, I would rather stop tomorrow, go and ride club ten-mile time trials, ride to the café on Sundays, and work in Tesco stacking shelves.

Another issue that came up during the Tour was that Geert Leinders, a doctor who had been working at Rabobank in 2007 when Michael Rasmussen was sacked for doping and Thomas Dekker failed a drugs test, had been employed by Sky for eighty days a year in 2011 and 2012. I’d rather have him with the team than a doctor fresh out of medical school who has come straight into it. I’ve had no sense of anything untoward with him. He is totally committed to what we
believe
in: a clean sport. He was there simply as a doctor for us because he’s been around cycling a long time and he knows the sport from top to bottom.

It’s vital that people like that are involved now because they have seen how it used to be and they can remind today’s riders of how cycling was. He’s seen the problems that were there in the past; he never agreed with what was going on, and was one of the sane people who were in the sport at that time. We need guys like Geert Leinders because on top of being a bloody good doctor with a heap of experience, guys like him can play a role, explaining to riders like Ben Swift, Luke Rowe and Peter Kennaugh – young lads who are determined to race clean – what it was like in the past and how lucky they are to be racing now.

It came out during the 2012 Vuelta that Lance Armstrong was being stripped of his titles and immediately there were people in touch with me wanting to know what I thought.

I haven’t followed all the ins and outs of the Lance Armstrong case, but I know the broad lines: he’s not contesting the doping charges against him (although he’s still protesting his innocence); as it stands his Tour titles have been taken away from him; there is Tyler Hamilton’s book, which is pretty damning; the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) report on the US Postal case makes it clear that he was doping in a sophisticated way. Regardless of what I’ve said over the years I’ve always had my suspicions about him. When the news broke it was like when you’re a kid and you find out Father Christmas doesn’t exist. It’s shocking still, but not a huge surprise. When he made his
comeback
in 2009 it became more relevant to me because I was actually racing against him, whereas during his earlier reign I think I only came up against him once, in the Critérium International in 2004.

By 2009 it had become clear that many of the top guys weren’t clean at the time Lance was at his best – a lot of the guys who finished 2nd to him were subsequently caught, and quite a few of those who finished 3rd, 4th or 5th – but when he came back to the sport I quite liked him. He seemed much more relaxed, he seemed to be returning for reasons other than winning. He was quite gracious in defeat in some of those races; he was quite respectful, encouraging of what I was trying to do. I thought whatever had happened in the past had happened; it hadn’t affected me in all those years. I wasn’t surprised about him. I’ve heard stories from people, like my old boss and Lance’s former US Postal teammate Jonathan Vaughters, who were there at the time about what they’d seen Lance do but it wasn’t something I was going to go bleating about in the press.

In 2008 I gave an interview to Paul Kimmage in which he asked me why I thought it was good that Lance was coming back to the sport. It was difficult because when Paul interviews you, you are being scrutinised constantly. It’s not a relaxed, informal chat; you feel very self-conscious, wary of each word you say and how it can be interpreted. I felt I was being set up a little bit as a voice for his beliefs – it was something I’d felt from doing interviews with him from 2006 onwards. I thought I was in danger of getting in a position with Paul where I was telling him what he wanted to hear,
because
he could be quite aggressive at times when you didn’t say what he wanted you to. So I stuck to my line that Lance’s return was a good thing for the sport.

I was also asked on Radio Five Live at the time what I thought about Armstrong coming back. I said you had to look at what he had done for the sport. Without Armstrong and the work he had done for cycling in America, American teams like the team I had just signed for, Garmin, probably wouldn’t exist, and the financial backing that has come in from guys like Doug Ellis, who backs Garmin, wouldn’t be available. Without Lance’s achievement in the Tour, Livestrong, his cancer charity, wouldn’t have such a high profile and perhaps wouldn’t be able to do the work it does. Without Lance, cycling mightn’t be as popular – he made it cool in a way. I said the fact alone that he was coming back to the sport had raised cycling’s profile; he announced his comeback on the cover of
Vanity Fair
, not a cycling magazine, which shows how he had given the sport its current broad appeal. That was where I was coming from; that was why I said it was good for the sport.

I didn’t know of course that eight or nine months down the line I was going to go toe-to-toe with him for a place on the podium in the Tour de France. With hindsight, I’m glad I never criticised him. I had to go and race with the guy and everyone around him. I know what Lance is like if you make an enemy of him. We’ve seen it in the past. He could have made my life very difficult.

But if it were confirmed that he was doping in 2009–10 then he can get fucked, completely. Before, he wouldn’t have
been
alone in what he was doing, but the sport has changed since he retired the first time. After 2009, what Lance was or was not doing directly affected everybody, because the sport was making a real effort; Garmin and other teams were being pretty vocal about riding clean. At the time Lance was saying things about his coming back to prove a point, that he would publish his blood profiles: but if he was doping after 2009, he was treating us all like idiots. Ultimately I finished 4th in the Tour that year, by 38sec to Armstrong who was in 3rd place; getting on the podium of the Tour would have been something I would have had for the rest of my life. It might have been my only chance.

On a personal level, the way I look at it now is that, as the yellow jersey, the pressure is on me to answer all the questions about doping – even though I’ve never doped. I was asked the questions in the Tour and I gave the answers I did. I don’t like talking about doping, but during the Tour, as the race leader, I had no choice. So I’m pissed off that Lance has done what he did; it feels as if he’s disappeared and I have to answer all the questions. That really, really annoys me. And where is he? Halfway around the world, doing this that and the other. But we are the ones in this sport today who have got to answer all the questions.

It feels like Lance has dumped on the sport and we’ve got to clean it up because he’s not around any more: he’s not managing a team, he’s not at the races like other riders from the past – Sean Kelly, Eddy Merckx – he’s out there carrying on as he was before. He’s still giving statements saying he’s standing by this, it’s a vendetta, everything that’s been said
out
there is all rubbish. But as things stand today, I’ve won more Tours de France than he has.

If I’m asked what I feel about it, there is a lot of anger. We are the ones here, in this sport, right now, who have to pick up the pieces. We are the ones trying to race our bikes, the ones sitting there in front of the press trying to convince them of our innocence, continuing to do things in the right way; they’ve trashed the office and left; we’re the ones trying to tidy it all up. I’m doing what I do. I just hope that by conducting myself as I have done this year, by winning the races I have and doing what we’re doing clean, we’re creating a legacy for the next lot of riders who come along.

CHAPTER 13

THE OTHER TEAM

THE MORNING OF
the time trial in Besançon was exactly the same as for any other time trial I’ve ever ridden. I was in the old, familiar routine, which I relish so much. But one thing sticks out.

I finished my warm-up and was getting on the bus and putting all my kit on, when Tim asked me, ‘How do you feel?’

‘Amazing, Tim. I feel great.’

He just smiled at me. I got on my bike and followed the
soigneur
through the crowd to the start. When we got there, I sat on the chair by the ramp and all the cameras came in front of me: flash, flash, flash. At that point I’ve got my eyes shut; I don’t look at them. I just sit like that with my eyes closed under the visor but I can still see all those flashing things through my eyelids.

I remember thinking, ‘I wish they’d stop doing that’, so I made a conscious mental note about it: when I got to Chartres
eleven
days later, and I went to the start, I would turn my chair around so that I could sit with my back to all the cameras. It wasn’t a distraction, it was just that I was in such control of my emotions that I could take note of it and think, ‘I don’t like that, I’m going to change that next time.’ I shifted it to a different part of my head, whereas when I was younger I’d have thought, ‘For Pete’s sake, get out of my flipping way’, or something like that.