HISTORY IN THE MAKING
Bradley Wiggins, who rose to fame on the velodrome, is poised to become the first Briton to win the Tour de France
One scorching summer’s day in 1903, 60 cyclists pedalled out of a southern Paris suburb for a 2,428-kilometre ride that had been christened the Tour de France. More than sport, this epic journey has come to be seen as a great exploration that turns athletes into adventurers.
This has been the growing sense throughout Bradley Wiggins’s attempt to become the first British rider to conquer France’s greatest physical challenge.
It is not just a race he leads in his yellow jersey. He has been riding against history. With each spin of his wheels the meaning of the Tour has seemed clearer.
A Briton should not be out there in a maillot jaune. A rider who found fame in velodromes has no place in the Alps and the Pyrenees. A Paul Weller clone in sideburns does not fit the stylistic norm of the general classification.
At first the Sky rider’s quest to win the Tour looked like a vulgar miscalculation: ‘You are not in the Manchester velodrome now, old chum. This is France, and France will break your heart, beautifully.’
Through the prism of a London lad trying to become the first rosbif champion, Wiggins has come to seem a sportsman of immense stature. So much so that people back here are within their rights to ask whether tomorrow’s finish in Paris will establish him as the greatest individual British sportsman of all time.
Hang on. Let’s put it another way.
A better question might be: is Wiggins the author of the greatest single achievement by an individual in all of British sport?
Sir Chris Hoy, the monarch of the track, had a nibble at this. “I have to pinch myself when I switch on the TV and I see Bradley in the yellow jersey and going well on the mountain stages,” Hoy said. “If he makes it to the finishing line in Paris it will be one of the greatest achievements by a British sportsman ever.
“It’s phenomenal. When you break it down and look at what it takes to win the Tour; it’s not just one day, it’s not just having several purple patches.
“It inspires me and it’s an amazing story for the sport. You can see it’s everywhere in the general media and it can only be good for the sport.”
The modern mania for extreme physical challenges is said to reflect the restlessness and faithlessness of our age. People seek an escape from the banality of the consumer society by rowing across the Atlantic, embarking on mountain treks or just running marathons or training for triathlons.
So the appreciation of Wiggins’ work is now much sharper than it is when he is spinning round the gleaming indoor world of a beautifully polished velodrome.
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Out there in France, you are being tortured every day.
This Tour consists of one prologue and 20 stages of 3,417 kilometres, with nine mountain stages rated either medium or severe.
It has taken the intrepid Wiggins through the Vosges, the Jura, the Swiss Jura, the Alps and the Pyrenees. He will have been in the saddle for nearly 90 hours.
The race prides itself on “testing the line between sanity and genius.” Not a bad basis, you might think, for filing a claim to be greater than Sir Nick Faldo, Sir Steve Redgrave, Lord Coe, Steve Ovett, Denise Lewis or Daley Thompson. As a team cyclist, naturally, Wiggins rides the line between collectivity and lone wolf-dom. Several times on the mountain climbs we have watched Chris Froome pull him to the summit and asked: Who would be the winner if the two Britons were riding in a Tour of freelancers?
Froome’s self-sacrifices will not feature in the record books when the name of Bradley Wiggins is etched, alongside his three Olympic gold medals — soon to be more, probably, when London 2012 turns its pedals. Planted sweetly at the heart of the tale meanwhile is a Corinthian act that prompted the French media to call Wiggins Le Gentleman.
The tacks-in-the-road outrage was handled perfectly by the champion elect. By waiting for the victims to catch up he displayed a level of honour missing from the dope cheats who have encouraged us to suspect that the Tour cannot be won without drugs.
Other, more personal factors support the Wiggins claim on the No. 1 spot.
Few can know what it is to be inspired by a sportsman father (Gary Wiggins), be abandoned by him, confront the truth of his alcoholism and then hear of his death on a street in New South Wales. This week, a television documentary examined the crisis of 2010, when he was not training properly, and his collarbone-breaking fall in last year’s race.
The boy who wobbled on to the track at Herne Hill and hurried to W.H. Smith in Kilburn to buy Cycling Weekly and paste pictures on his wall has been on his own inner road, as well as the asphalt one to the Champs-Élysées. His first coach describes him as “a racing animal” but he has charmed his followers too.
As strong as the British sporting tradition is the country’s love of expeditions. The one undertaken by Le Gentleman this July has been mesmerizing and the equal of any individual feat by an athlete from these islands. A 109-year quest is almost over.