Bradley Wiggins: My Time (25 page)

As soon as Christian and Bernie had gone to the front, Mick Rogers came to me straight away and said, ‘This is wrong, I don’t agree with it, we shouldn’t be doing this.’ Mick’s thinking was that we’d been racing full-pelt for nearly an hour and a half and we didn’t need to put our guys on the front. They’d already had some hard days in the mountains, and we had two big stages in the Pyrenees still to come. Something had to give. We couldn’t chase everything, we couldn’t treat our bodies as if they were indestructible; we could either roll along for the last 100km and get through the stage, or we could potentially ride our backsides off to bring this back for the sprint.

Mick was saying this for about 5km, and then he got really annoyed. Eventually he said, ‘This is fucking wrong, I am not happy about this.’ So he went back to the car, and said to Sean: ‘Look, this is the wrong decision, here, now.’ He truly put his balls on the line, Mick did, because potentially he was risking the wrath of Cav. So the decision was made and Sean put the word out: ‘OK, we’re not going to ride. Stop riding, boys, that’s it, Mick’s right.’ And that was that.

I remember talking to Cav on the road at the time; I could only say, ‘Sorry, mate.’ He was gutted that day because he really felt that he could win, but that was one of those
situations
where you have to play it safe. We may have won the Tour that day because we saved two pairs of legs: Christian’s for sure, and probably Bernie’s. When we got into the Pyrenees after the rest day, it was Bernie who made the pace all the way up the Aubisque and along the valley, and Christian was able to ride a fair bit of the way up the Tourmalet. I take my hat off to Mick because it takes a rider of huge experience and courage to make the call he did when he did, and particularly when you’ve got a sprinter of the quality of Mark Cavendish in the team. I wanted Mark to win but we had to be brutal at times and Mick took that decision. Although I was thinking the same thing, I didn’t really have the guts to say it.

In our attempt to win the yellow jersey, Mark was the rider within Sky who lost out the most. So that helps to explain what happened coming into Brive on the last Friday of the Tour. It was a long stage, 230km, up and down; the break went early and the peloton never seemed to be happy with it. It was the last chance for a lot of riders to win a stage so people kept chasing; the break would come back, another one would go, someone wouldn’t like it and they’d pull it back. Eventually twenty-odd riders went away and a few teams rode behind all day. It was a tough day for everybody and when it became clear that a bunch kick was on the cards, I gave it everything in the final kilometre and a half to get Cav within reach of those last few breakaways.

I like the satisfaction you get from being part of a lead-out train, having that open road in front of you, doing your job, swinging off, watching someone like Cav win. It’s a better
feeling
sometimes than winning yourself. But the time leading up to when you get in the position to do the lead out is the tough one; it’s not something I enjoy doing. As I’ve got older I’ve wanted to take fewer risks.

I knew that the following day I would have to go all out in the time trial and finish off the job of winning the Tour. But I had always wanted to be in yellow leading out the rainbow jersey for the sprint; it had been something I had thought about since the start of the Tour, and finally I got the chance to do it. I used the speed that I’d built up from that training on my core muscles, the little extra kick that had come through from the track, and pulled Cav until the final metres, when he produced one of the best sprints of his life to go past Luis León Sánchez and Nicolas Roche as if they were standing still. That was four stage wins in the bag for Sky. And two more stages to go.

CHAPTER 16

OPEN ROAD: II

Saturday 21 July, 16:36 European Summer Time

Avenue Jean Mermoz, Chartres

Stage 19, 2012 Tour de France

IT WAS NINE
months since the 2012 route had been confirmed with the long time trial on the last Saturday; in all that time I would never have imagined, or perhaps only in my wildest dreams, that I would go into that stage with a two-minute lead on my rivals. I had my mind set on that day from long before the Tour started, but the ideal scenario had always looked quite different. It had seemed that if I could be within thirty or forty seconds of someone like Cadel Evans going into that last time trial I would be capable of taking the yellow jersey off him and winning the Tour.

Looking at the way the 2012 Tour was structured, we had always worked on the assumption that if I could avoid dropping too much time on the climbs to Cadel Evans and the others, I might be able to take the jersey on that day. I’ve
never
considered myself that good in the mountains at the Tour but I knew I could limit my losses on the best climbers at the summit finishes. The strategy we had worked on in the previous couple of years was simple: empty myself to the summit on every mountain stage of the Tour, but never with a view of winning up there or leading the race, just concentrate on losing as little time as possible. The improvements we made in climbing in 2012 had meant that I was always riding with the lead groups on the summit finishes in races such as Paris–Nice and the Dauphiné, so that made it a lot easier; in those races I was able to stretch my lead in the time trials. The Tour had ended up being exactly the same.

It was during the stage before, the stage into Brive, that I started thinking about that time trial. We had got the last two Pyrenean stages out of the way without any great damage, so then my thoughts immediately turned to Bonneval. About then, I began thinking, ‘What if you can win the stage to seal the Tour?’ That was the main thing. The stage to Brive was a long one; it turned out to be actually quite a tough stage, we came into the finish and obviously we had a job to do for Cav. At that point there were no thoughts about the day after; it was just, ‘Let’s do this for Mark.’ But once he’d won, my thoughts turned to the time trial. I didn’t do the press conference after the stage, because I wanted to go back to the team bus to warm down properly and then we – the lead riders in the standings – had to get in helicopters to fly north for the time trial. Leading the race clearly took the pressure off. I wasn’t trying to take the yellow jersey off Cadel, I was defending it, but it wasn’t a done deal, because any serious
mechanical
problem, or something else like a crash could have meant the race was over.

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.