What Wiggins did next Olympic cycling legend takes to the water
Mentor James Cracknell tells Tom Cary why he is backing cycling great’s latest sporting challenge
It promises to be one of the stranger sporting events of the year: Sir Bradley Wiggins, back in his Lycra, churning out watts at the Olympic velodrome. Only this time, not on a bike but a rowing machine. It is difficult to know how to pitch Wiggins’s tilt at the men’s open 2km event at the British Indoor Rowing Championships today. Sporting curiosity, knockabout fun, serious audition?
The most successful British Olympian of all time in terms of medals won is not ruling out a sixth Games in Tokyo in 2020. If the 37-year-old can set a competitive time today as part of a field that includes a handful of Team GB rowers – and his friend and mentor James Cracknell believes he is capable of finishing “at the back end of the national team” in around six minutes – Wiggins is hoping to force British Rowing into giving him a trial on the water.
Cracknell believes they should, too, telling The Daily Telegraph they would be “foolish not to”, given the exposure Wiggins’s involvement could give the sport.
That exposure, however, might not be unanimously positive. It is this sub-plot which gives today’s event a bit of an edge. There will undoubtedly be an elephant in the velodrome. Wiggins has spent the last 12 months fending off questions about Therapeutic Use Exemptions and jiffy bags, hardly speaking publicly since it emerged last autumn, following a data hack by Fancy Bears, that he took injections of kenacort – a corticosteroid with alleged performance-enhancing qualities – on three occasions in his cycling career, including before his victorious 2012 Tour de France.
Wiggins and then-employers Team Sky point out that the injections were all perfectly legal and registered with race authorities and the World Antidoping Agency, but there remain suspicions that they abused the TUE system, venturing into grey areas they should not have; suspicions only fuelled by an ultimately inconclusive UK Anti-doping investigation into a package delivered to Wiggins at the 2011 Criterium du Dauphine.
Andy Parkinson, chief executive of British Rowing, has no qualms about Wiggins taking part today. “It would be a slippery slope if we started to exclude athletes who haven’t actually been found guilty of breaking any rules,” he told The Daily Telegraph last month.
The rowers, too, appear sanguine. Matt Rossiter, who took bronze in the open 2km last year in 5min 53sec, says there was a buzz at the team training camp in the Sierra Nevada last week at the prospect of going up against Wiggins. “He has always been a bit of a sporting hero of mine,” Rossiter said this week. “I hope I can say hello. I think it’s great that he’s having a crack at rowing and raising the profile of our sport.”
Cracknell admits that he and Wiggins have barely discussed the controversy since Wiggins first approached him for help earlier this year, adding he “does not know enough” about the TUE controversy or the drug in question to have a strong opinion.
“Would I have looked deeper at the issues, had I still been competing? I’m sure I would, but it’s not something we have spoken about,” he says. “I’ve known Brad for 20 years. He asked for my advice – which initially was to stay
‘You need heart and lungs and a good pair of legs for power in rowing – Brad has all three’
away from the horrible machine – and to help prepare him.”
Cracknell adds that “if there is one good thing to come out of it all, it is that we have a clarification of the TUE rules”. Mostly, though, he is looking forward to seeing how his pupil performs today. Technically and physically, Cracknell explains, it is a huge ask.
Wiggins is “20-25kg heavier” than the 67kg (10st 8lb) he weighed when he won the Tour in 2012, meaning he is likely to be around 93kg (14st 9lb) today. That is still “at the smaller end of the scale”. Mo Sbihi, the current British record holder at 5min 40sec, stands 6ft 6in and weighs 112kg (17st 9lb). But Cracknell was a similar size to Wiggins at 6ft3in and 95kg (15st) in his pomp, so Wiggins’s physique is not hopeless.
“Ultimately,” Cracknell says, “you need heart and lungs and a good pair of legs – that’s where
most of your power comes from in rowing – and Brad has all three.”
Would six minutes for 2km – a time Cracknell equates to a 2hr 40min marathon, “ballsy for a first-timer but nowhere near a two-hour marathon” – be enough to tempt the GB selectors? At 37?
“I rowed with Steve [Redgrave] in Sydney and he was 38 and had colitis and diabetes,” Cracknell replies. “Brad is healthy. He knows how to perform, and his power can improve with more time in the gym. His biggest handicap will be technique. But if I was in charge of British Rowing – and Brad produces what his physiology suggests he’s capable of on Saturday – I would give him a chance. If he shows no aptitude, you can just say, ‘Thanks but no thanks’, but at least your athletes and coaches would have learnt a load from a guy with more Olympic and world medals than the rest of the squad put together.
“If you asked the public who are into sport to name five rowers, they’d come up with very few and probably none of them would still be rowing. The most requested interview on Saturday won’t be any of the rowers. It will be Brad. And if I was the press officer for British Rowing, I would want to use him to attract young kids to the sport.”