This time last year, Team Sky spent a lot of time telling the world about the high-tech trappings of their team bus. This July, the talk, as it should be, is all of the head and the legs, the key components of a successful Tour de France.
Bradley Wiggins, the Sky leader, knows about the head and the legs better than most. The most striking moment of his 2010 Tour came when he admitted his shortcomings within seconds of crossing a finish line, high in the French Pyrenees.
A crestfallen Wiggins was at a loss to explain his decline in form. How had he achieved that fourth-place finish in the 2009 Tour? “A fluke,” he shrugged dismissively, as the British media crowded around him.
Eleven months later the landscape has changed. Wiggins is a contender once again, eyes definitely fixed on a top-ten placing, if not a top-five finish.
Yet experience has taught Wiggins not to believe the hype. “I was written off after last year’s race,” he said calmly at the Sky team’s press conference, a wry smile on his face. “I’m back in the limelight now.”
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The Londoner is a mercurial character and, since his 24th place finish in 2010, it has taken a while to rebuild his confidence. After last year’s letdown, he and Sky claim to have learnt their lesson. Nobody talks about the mood lighting or space-age interiors on the bus any more.
What’s more, the timidity of his prologue performance last year is unlikely to be repeated. Wiggins has learnt that to finish strongly in the Tour de France, no days can be taken easily. That “over-thinking”, as Wiggins described it, evident on the very first day of last year’s race, has gone. Now, the emphasis is on keeping things simple.
“Everything’s been geared towards July,” Wiggins said. “The goal is always the podium, but I am not going to over-think it.” Another key change in his build-up to this year’s Tour is that Wiggins has not been “over-raced”. There has been no three-week Giro d’Italia on his programme; instead he has combined altitude training with racing in — and winning — the week-long and prestigious Dauphiné Libéré race in the French Alps.
Despite that, this Tour de France route does not favour him. Unlike in 2009, there is no opening time-trial and the Olympic team pursuit champion may yet rue the lack of time-trialling kilometres (there were 94.5km against the clock in 2009, but only 65.5km scheduled in this year’s race).
In 2009, the internal warfare within the Astana team of Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong helped his cause. At the moments when Contador might have crushed his rivals — such as on the penultimate stage on Mont Ventoux — the Spaniard backed off, wary of heaping any further humiliations on his estranged team-mate.
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Further questions remain over Wiggins’s leadership instincts. Last year, he admitted that he shied away from that responsibility. “I wasn’t carrying the team with me,” he said. “Major mistakes were made.” Despite those misgivings, he and his Sky team start the Tour in a far stronger position than last summer. Their recent performances — in the Dauphiné and also in Germany’s leading stage race, the Bayern Rundfarht, won by Geraint Thomas — have been far more convincing than any last year.
The first test of this collective strength comes in tomorrow’s team time-trial, looping out and back from Les Essarts, in the heart of the Vendée.
Thomas, one of Sky’s coming stars, is like Wiggins, a veteran of Team GB’s Olympic gold medal-winning pursuit team. “I’m here to work for the team but the team time-trial is my main objective, it’s so similar to the team pursuit,” the Welshman said.
Like several other teams, Sky’s riders were out training on the team time-trial course yesterday morning. At only 23 kilometres, the stage is shorter than past team time-trial stages in the Tour, but a good performance will enhance Wiggins’s chances of fulfilling his aspirations.
Today, on the first road stage, from the Passage du Gois to Mont des Alouettes, attention will be on the sprinters. The route, principally flat, climaxes with a 2.2km climb to the finish line. Whether this hill will suit Mark Cavendish, or any of his sprint rivals — such as Thor Hushovd, Tyler Farrar and Alessandro Petacchi — is a moot point. If not, it may be a rider such as Philippe Gilbert, of Belgium, or Thomas Voeckler, the local hero, who tries his hand.
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Such is his sprinting prowess, Cavendish remains the favourite to claim the green jersey despite radical changes to the structure of the classification. In a break with the past, there will now be only one mid-stage intermediate sprint per stage (in addition to the points awarded for a stage victory). In theory, this makes it possible to claim the points classification without ever winning a stage.
This change may play into the hands of Hushovd, the world road-race champion, who won the sprints competition in 2009 and who has a liking for marrying unexpected lone break-aways to his powerful sprint finish.
Cavendish maintains that the rule changes will have no impact on his racing style. “The way to win the green jersey is to win a lot of stages,” he said. “I shouldn’t expect the Tour de France to be designed for me to win sprints.”
Q&A
• So what’s a domestique? A French cleaning lady?
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Domestiques are the riders in each team charged with protecting the team leader, whether it’s Bradley Wiggins, Alberto Contador or Andy Schleck. They fetch bidons — water bottles — and clothing from the team car, protect their man from crosswinds and offer up their wheel in the event of a puncture. In essence a butler on wheels.
• That’s in every team?
Not every team: some teams assemble a group of riders capable of winning a stage here and there, rather than focusing on one man and targeting the race overall. In truth, only half a dozen riders can really harbour hopes of victory in Paris.
• So what’s the peloton and how do you get a ticket for the autobus?
The peloton is the main bunch of riders. The autobus, or simply the bus, is the group of stragglers, usually non-climbers, who join together in the mountain stages, hoping to finish inside the daily time limit.
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• And I heard there’s a lot of bonking on the Tour?
Bonking is the term for hitting the wall. A rider who has completely run out of glycogen and has effectively ground to a standstill, is said to have bonked.
• What’s a directeur sportif?
The sports director is the team manager, usually the ashen-faced figure stepping out of a team car beyond the finish line, trying to justify his tactical decisions. Most of them are former riders, which, ethically, has caused a little unease in recent years.
• And why do they get so excited about the lanterne rouge?
Part of the Tour’s tradition is that the last rider in the race standings is called the red lantern — lanterne rouge. This dates back to the very earliest Tours, when the riders rode brutal endless stages through the night and into the next day.
• I’ve also heard riders described as strong rouleurs
A rouleur is a rider who is a strong all-rounder and capable of maintaining high speeds for long periods at the front of the peloton. Jens Voigt, of Leopard Trek, is one of the finest exponents.
• Last thing — if Mark Cavendish is such a great sprinter, why does he need all these lead-out men?
Cavendish needs to reserve all his strength for the frenetic finale of each flat stage if he is going to be quick enough to beat his rivals. His lead-out men act as pilot fish, finding the gaps, protecting him from headwinds, before pulling over when the line is in sight.