Inside Team Sky (7 page)

First though, a brief reminder of some things which happened on the 2012 Tour de France – the race which turned Bradley Wiggins from sideburned mod into knight of the realm and national
institution. Froome was there for another stint of stoical servitude.

Stage Seven. The climb into La Planche des Belles Filles. Tough. Tough. Tough. The gradient goes from 14 per cent to 22 per cent. And you’ve had a long day. Richie Porte did his dog work
and when he handed over to Froome only Wiggins, Cadel Evans, Vincenzo Nibali and Rein Taaramäe remained in contention. And Froome.

Froome injected some pace into the business. Evans went with a kilometre to go but he had miscalculated. Froome, Wiggins and Nibali trailed after him like the tail on a kite. With 100m to go the
stage was anybody’s, so Chris Froome decided to make it his. He nipped around Nibali for his first ever stage win. Wiggins finished a couple of seconds behind Evans. All were happy.

‘Now he has got his stage and he is going to be an integral part of me winning this race,’ said Wiggins, his presumption barely masking the fear that Froome wouldn’t be
satisfied with one stage win.

So to Stage Eleven. 148km to La Toussuire. All was looking well heading into the first real mountaintop finish. Wiggins in yellow.

It is said that at a team meeting that morning, Froome had inquired if he had permission to attack from 3km out. That, he was told, would depend on Bradley. Froome’s eagerness was fed, not
just by his natural competitiveness, but by a puncture on the first day of racing which had cost him 1'25". He felt he could do his work for Wiggins and get a podium finish for himself, but only if
he was allowed to retrieve the time lost by puncturing.

Circumstances were different from La Vuelta, as by now Wiggins had two minutes on Froome, but letting Froome jump early could mean that Nibali and Evans would tag along with him eating into
Wiggins’s lead as he went. Whatever, nothing would be allowed to damage the team’s pursuit of the Tour’s yellow jersey.

An attack from that far out? It’s unlikely, Froome was told, but maybe in the last 500m. As it happened, Evans launched a madcap attack with 56km to go but got burned on the Croix de Fer,
the second savage
hors catégorie
climb of the day.

The last climb of the day is La Toussuire, 18km of torture. Richie Porte takes his turn at the front. The peloton stretches out in survival mode now. Team Sky has the same tactic as ever: high
steady pace, burn off as many as you can.

Today, though, Vincenzo Nibali is feeling defiant. He shoots ahead of Wiggins’s group and makes a break for glory with 12km left. He is asking Team Sky what they have. He goes and he goes
fast. Team Sky leave him be and pedal on. This is the Kerrison Way: react by not reacting, continue riding at an even tempo because that way you get to the top in the quickest time. So Plan A is
still operational. Richie Porte drops away leaving just Froome and Wiggins to implement it.

Froome pushes on. Wiggins follows, Frank Schleck and Cadel Evans trailing him. Froome, as usual, rides his bike in that almost boyish way, knees and elbows attached but separate from the torso,
head down, eyes constantly pointed at the road directly below. It works though. He hauls Nibali back in.

So it goes. Nip and tuck at the front. With just 6km left only Wiggins, Froome and Schleck have any chance of catching Nibali who has broken away again. Five kilometres to go and Froome is
working like a faithful sheepdog, dragging Wiggins back to the ambitious Nibali. This time Nibali appears genuinely spent.

Wiggins sits in behind Froome. Sliding uphill. Thus it shall be.

But suddenly Froome breaks. Leaning forward into the incline, accelerating. It is surprising and it is confusing. A sliver of madness in Team Sky’s bloodstream. Nibali gives chase. Wiggins
is left in yellow, forlornly climbing alone. In the team car, Sean Yates asks Froome had he Brad’s permission for this? What is going on, Froomey?

Finally Froome relents. He straightens in the saddle, slows and waits for Wiggins.

In the aftermath Brailsford and his team did what they do best. They controlled the controllables. What were beyond their reach were the storm clouds gathering on social media. Bradley
Wiggins’s wife Cath tweeted, pointedly thanking Michael Rogers and Richie Porte for ‘genuine selfless effort and true professionalism’.

Froome’s partner Michelle Cound tweeted that she found this ‘Typical’. That she was ‘beyond disappointed’. She added later, ‘If you want loyalty get a Froome
dog – a quality I value although being taken advantage of by others.’

There it lay. For their part, Wiggins and Froome did their best to varnish over the cracks in their relationship. Behind the scenes Wiggins, who at the best of times needs to be handled
sensitively, was saying that it might be best if he himself went home. In front of the microphones and cameras, Froome and Wiggins threw each other little bouquets of nice words.

There was one more hint of insurrection. On Stage Seventeen Froome appeared to go rogue again on the finish to the summit at Col de Peyresourde. This would be the last ascent of the entire Tour.
Wiggins just needed not to get left behind and, barring unprecedented catastrophe, the Tour de France was his.

But . . .

With 4km to go on a mini descent of the Col, Froome conferred with Wiggins. What was said is unclear, but with just over 3km to go Wiggins kicked on and Froome tucked in behind. To the onlooker
it looked as if Wiggins was drafting Froome to give him the chance to break after the stage leader Valverde. Froome left Wiggins behind and the lead group of eight riders shattered. Froome kept
going.

He took a glance back at Wiggins, however, and Wiggins didn’t look right. Valverde was catchable now. Froome seemed to urge Wiggins on but Wiggins’s head was in a different place. He
was about to seal the Tour. Froome kept urging him on. Wiggins kept declining.

To keep the pot boiling, Froome’s partner Michelle Cound tweeted three words: ‘DAMN IT GOOOOOOO.’ Froome decided not to abandon Wiggins, however, and sacrificed the stage by 19
seconds.

Nobody was impressed. Sean Yates told the media that Froome had a lot to learn. Froome noted that he thought that it had been an ideal stage for Team Sky to win. Wiggins promised that soon
Froome’s day would come.

They got to Paris as number one and number two in the General Classification, but by then it was becoming clear that Froome expected to be riding with a Wiggo dog working for him in the 2013
Tour. He felt he could have won the 2011 Vuelta, might have won the 2012 Tour and his days of ‘could have’ and ‘might have’ were over.

Their relationship will be a key narrative of Team Sky’s 2013 season. The backgrounds of the two men each make for compelling stories but they could hardly be more different. Both have clear difficulties in their family upbringing but they grew up in environments so disparate that it is a miracle that their paths ever intersected in pro cycling.

Wiggins was born and reared in Kilburn. He grew up in Dibdin House, a large block of flats owned by the Church Commissioners, but has been swaddled by British Cycling from the time his talent
first emerged. From the age of twelve onwards he was riding the eight miles to Herne Hill velodrome for track racing. He follows the programme, understands the system.

He has never clung to a tree for two hours while a belligerent hippo waited to kill him. Froome has. He grew up outside Nairobi, collecting snakes and scorpions, the only white kid in a gang who
would spend days and weeks cycling in the Ngong Hills. He came to Europe alone, represented Kenya alone, did virtually everything alone until he entered the realm of the controlled
controllables.

In retrospect, too much perhaps has been made of the breakaway. Froome pulled back. No physical damage was done, Froome did rein himself in, Wiggins lost no time. But the relationship between
two leaders in a cycling team can be like an exotic fruit – once mishandled, bruised forever. Wiggins felt betrayed and humiliated by Froome’s brief show of strength. The rift between
the two men remains.

When I meet with Wiggins it is a logical jumping-off point. Had he really wanted to come home from the Tour de France? Was Froome’s jump that serious?

‘Because you perceive something to be something, what happens within the race, whether you are right as to how you perceived it is another thing but at the time, it’s like what
happened there, in hindsight and obviously racing since, a winter has gone by, and you realised that wasn’t the intention of someone, but at the time you take it as you see it. Because we had
a plan, we were in yellow, everything was going great, we’d dropped Cadel, four of us left, we’re nearly at the summit, it’s nearly over and then Chris goes and it’s like
“what’s just happened?”

‘But in his mind, he was thinking, I want to get rid of Nibali so he is not chasing me for second, you could see now looking back, having spoken to him and that, what he was thinking at
the time, in the heat of the moment, in the Tour and everything, on those stages, he has a lot going on.’

What becomes clear as Wiggins speaks is that the relationship with Froome is dysfunctional. I put it to him that he perceives Froome as having betrayed him and that as such there is no way back.
He doesn’t demur or correct me.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever really forgotten it, especially the one in the Pyrenees, right at the end, there was two of us left, it was over, the time trial is tomorrow, the Tour
is won, to jeopardise that, I still felt whether we were going for the stage or whatever, Valverde was there, I still don’t one hundred per cent understand that, but enough time has passed. I
just accept it, that was whatever, but we have a professional working relationship.

‘I said in January, we sat in a hotel down there, and they asked what are you two like off the bike. I said we don’t room together, we don’t mingle off the bike, but we are two
very competitive leaders of this team and we both want to win, and that’s it really.’

At the end of the day it all worked out. Wiggins won the final time trial. He won his Tour de France. Ultimately Froome obeyed team orders. He stopped and waited. On Toussuire and in the
Pyrenees.

‘Did he do anything wrong?’ says Wiggins. ‘Perhaps he didn’t. He played ball, Chris.’

But Wiggins and Froome don’t have enough of a relationship left upon which to build something new. Here in early 2013 they are still speaking in riddles about their intentions for the
season. At the best of times it would be difficult to ask a four-time Olympic gold medallist and reigning Tour de France champion to step down and play
superdomestique
to the man who had
butlered for him the year before. With the distance between Froome and Wiggins seeming irreducible, it seems impossible.

Wiggins can almost taste the salt of his rival’s ambition and determination. He can see it in the way the season started in Oman with Froome devouring the desert sands. And he knows that
this year’s Tour will be more mountain than time trial.

‘He is a better climber than me. Chris is one of the best climbers in the world, we talk about weight and numbers, he’s got that frame of that time-triallist, powerful rider and
he’s five kilos lighter than me, he’s a freak in terms of his frame. That power, and yet he’s got this incredibly light climber’s weight. I envy him in some respects, I wish
I could be five kilos lighter and have the same power. ‘

I had gone to Mallorca to see Wiggins, to shoot the breeze at a time when he had only his bike and family for company. We spoke at a restaurant where one of his Tour de France jerseys hangs on
the wall and the staff invite his two young kids to come in behind the bar and help with the washing and drying. When Cath, their mum, tells the children it’s time to give the staff a little
space, they come back to the table immediately.

To better understand Wiggins, the contradictions must be embraced. Sometimes he likes to analyse his performance in training and talk numbers with Tim Kerrison. Other times he likes to roll
along without a thought about power output and aerodynamic drag. As much as he enjoys Kerrison’s intellect, he has learned even more from another Aussie, the no-frills, straight-talking and
emotional ex-pro Shane Sutton.

Wiggins’s intelligence is as obvious as his fragility. He could rationalise Froome’s flexing of muscle on those two mountain stages in the 2012 Tour but not get shot of the feeling
he had been humiliated.

For his part, Froome is less animated but more open about 2012 when we meet in Nice two weeks before the start of the Tour. He says that he found last year’s Tour to be
‘quite stressful’, and that he would stop short of calling Team Sky a ‘happy team environment’.

‘There were a lot of questions from the outside about the leadership and the way that Bradley is. He’s not very approachable, not very open and communicative about how he is feeling
or about the situation we had on the road. It certainly did add to the feeling that, “Wow, we’re first and second in this bike race.”’

Once again he explains the anatomy of his so-called treachery. From the very first stage when he lost 1'25" having punctured, he fretted about getting the time back. Somehow, he felt entitled to
have that time back. He needed to be among the contenders and, in the event of anything happening to Wiggins, he needed to be able to take over.

He attacked on the stage which he won and he attacked on La Toussuire when he felt that Wiggins was safe. He’d gone 200m up the road when he got the message in his ear that Wiggins was
‘falling off the wheels’ and he sat up completely and paced him home.

‘A lot of public and media would have jumped onto that, and said I was trying to attack Brad and I wasn’t, I knew the yellow jersey was not an option for me unless something happened
to Bradley.’

As for the Pyrenees, it was a miscommunication. Nothing more.

And what was the relationship between the two men heading into this season when Team Sky were hoping to expand their dominion?

‘I think that probably comes back to the way Bradley is, he’s not the most open guy, he keeps to himself a lot and a lot of people wonder where they stand with him and especially if
it looked like you had just attacked him while he was in the yellow jersey, he’s probably got a good reason for not talking to me.’