THE DRUG DEMONS

I N JULY 2006, a week after six of the sport’s biggest stars had been evicted from the Tour de France for doping, the American cycling magazine Velonews ran a poll on their website: Is this now a clean Tour de France?

Readers were invited to tick one of four boxes: 1 Yes, they’re too scared now.

2 It’s mostly clean.

3 No, they’re just careful.

4 Wait and see.

Bradley Wiggins was in Pau that afternoon when the results — (1) five per cent (2) 26 per cent (3) 50 per cent (4) 17 per cent — were published. The 26-year- old Londoner had just completed his first ever mountain stage in the Tour and the experience had almost broken him. His face was a mask of dust and sweat; a reporter watched as a team helper wiped him down and handed him a recovery drink. He finished 152nd of the 168 starters and over 17 minutes behind the stage winner, Juan Miguel Mercado.

‘That first climb was just mind-blowing,’ he said. ‘There was one stage when I thought, “What am I doing here?” ’ But his Calvary was only just beginning. The next stage was a blazing-hot ride across the storied peaks of the Tourmalet, the Aspin, the Peyresourde and the Portillon. A week later they had reached the Alps and three incredibly tough stages over Alpe d’Huez, La Toussuire and Morzine. Wiggins dug deep and hung on to Paris. He had finished his first Tour in 124th place — three hours and 24 minutes behind the winner, Floyd Landis — and celebrated that evening with his wife, Cath, happy and proud to have survived.

But three days later, his joy was tarnished when it was announced that Landis had tested positive. In his autobiography, In Pursuit of Glory, Wiggins records the moment vividly:

‘I felt physically sick when I heard the news. My first reaction was purely selfish and related only to me. “You b****** Landis,” I thought. “You have completely ruined my own small achievement of getting around the Tour de France and being a small part of cycling history. You and guys like you are p***ing on my sport and my dreams. Why do guys like you keep cheating? How many of you are out there, taking the p*** and getting away with it? Sod you all. You are a bunch of cheating b******* and I hope one day they catch the lot of you and ban you all for life. You can keep doing it your way and I will keep doing it mine. You won’t ever change me, you sods. B******s to all of you. At least I can look myself in the mirror”.’

A year later, Wiggins began his second Tour de France in London with a brilliant fourthplace finish in the prologue time trial and continued to shine during the first two weeks with a heroic solo breakaway on the sixth stage to Bourg-en-Bresse and a fifth-place finish in the time trial to Albi.

But it was the scourge of doping that dominated the headlines: the race leader, Michael Rasmussen, and his aversion to random dope controls; the German, Patrik Sinkewitz, and his surfeit of testosterone; the Kazakh, Alexandre Vinokourov, and his lust for transfusing blood. Every day brought a new scandal and the race was in chaos when it reached the Pyrenees.

The final mountain stage was a 218km ride from Orthez to the summit of the Col d’Aubisque. It was a blisteringly hot day but Wiggins dug deep and came home in the final group after more than seven hours in the saddle. They were four days from Paris; he needed a nice cold sponge and some dry clothes but when he reached the team helper, he could tell something was wrong and within seconds they were engulfed by a swarm of excited reporters… ‘Bradley.’ ‘Hey, Bradley.’ ‘Bradley.’ …his Italian team-mate at Cofidis, Cristian Moreni, had tested positive.

The police were waiting when he got back to the team bus and they were escorted by outriders with sirens blazing, directly to the station in Pau. He remembers feeling angry (‘F*** cycling and f*** the Tour de France!’), and then scared as he was bundled into a police car and whisked to the team hotel. His room and possessions were searched.

A decision was made to withdraw the team from the race. He booked a flight for the following morning, caught a lift to the airport and dumped all of his racing kit in a waste bin in the departures lounge.

At a press conference in Manchester the next day, he hammered Rasmussen, called for a life ban for Vinokourov and was scathing about Italian Ivan Basso and the American Tyler Hamilton, who had recently returned after doping bans. No one was spared.

HE lashed the world governing body for allowing the problem to grow, the team managers for rewarding the dopers with huge contracts and had some pertinent advice for the Tour de France organisers.

‘I think they have to take a strong look at who they invite to the race in the next few years; if there is one per cent suspicion or doubt that a team is involved in doping, or (are) working with certain doctors who are under suspicion of doping, then they shouldn’t be invited to the Tour de France, it’s as simple as that. They shouldn’t even be given a racing licence until they can prove that they are not involved in wrongdoing.’

When he had finished speaking there was almost a round of applause. Wiggins had just delivered one of the most impressive antidoping speeches in the history of the sport. And then something quite curious happened.

In 2008, sickened by the continuing scandals, Wiggins side-stepped the Tour to concentrate on the Beijing Olympics, before returning to the race the following season with a new American team, Garmin — widely acknowledged as the most ethical team in the peloton.

But the headlines that July were dominated by another returning star — the seven-time champion, Lance Armstrong.

In his book this is how Wiggins described what happened next…

‘To spend virtually three weeks alongside him, competing directly with him for a podium place, was not something I had ever envisaged in my career, especially after he retired in 2005. It was the stuff of dreams and