LONDON // Bradley Wiggins is still a long shot to become Britain's first Tour de France winner, but if he and Team Sky fail to reach their target it will not be for lack of preparation. Having won three pursuit track golds at two Olympics and numerous world titles, Wiggins was seen as a rider who would challenge in time trials but did not have the climbing power or endurance to be taken seriously as a Tour threat.
However, having shed up to 10kgs for the 2009 Tour, he finished in fourth place. That matched Robert Millar's previous best by a Briton - and sparked a rapid reassessment. When Sky set about building their British team they earmarked Wiggins as the man they had to have on board. After lengthy negotiations, he completed a football-style transfer from Garmin for the start of the season. Linking up on the roads with Dave Brailsford, the team principal, and a background team that had built the British track cycling squad into the best in the world meant Wiggins was comfortable in his new environment.
Although the team left some onlookers confused about how it would operate alongside and at the same time as a part of the British national squad, there has never been any doubt about their ultimate target. In the broad sense, Brailsford is intent on inspiring one million more people to take up cycling and he knows the best way to bring about such a revolution is via the Tour de France, still the only cycling race that gets widespread recognition in Britain.
In Wiggins, and a team hand-picked to support him, Brailsford and Britain are suddenly in a position to make a realistic challenge. Wiggins, born in Belgium and the son of a professional cyclist, is fully aware of the status of the race within and outside the sport. At the London launch of Team Sky earlier this year he said: "To be honest it is the only race that matters. You could win 100 races in a season and do nothing in the Tour ? well, the other races are important and are important for the team but the Tour is what we are going to be judged on."
As for his own prospects, he said: "People would have laughed if I said I'd come fourth in the Tour - they did laugh actually - but I know what I'm capable of now." Veteran British professional Malcolm Elliott, still racing at 48 and someone who had a taste of the Tour in the 1980s, said there was a lot of pressure on Wiggins but he could crack the podium. "It's not long since he was a pure track rider so he's done fantastically well and I'd love to see him match or improve on last year," Elliott said. "But there is a lot of pressure on him. I feel for him, there is a real weight of expectation on that team now. It's tough and it only takes one bad day and it can be all over. It's hard to quantify really. He's still new to the game in a way so there could still be lots more to come through."
Wiggins's chilled exterior masks a steely determination that was shown when he blasted to victory in the prologue of the Giro d'Italia - his first Grand Tour stage win after a series of time trial near-misses. After becoming the second Briton to wear the leader's jersey in the Giro after Mark Cavendish last year, having risked all on a wet, slippery surface, he said: "I decided I wasn't going to touch the brakes. I thought, 'If I crash, I crash.' I wanted to get the jersey or die trying."
Two crashes on the second stage brought him down to Earth and he had a bad day in the mountains but ploughed on, finishing the race 40th overall. Brailsford was delighted with Sky's first taste of a Grand Tour and it certainly whetted his appetite for the big one. Never a man to predict placings, preferring to focus on his charges being "the best they can", Brailsford is nevertheless pouring energy and the considerable technical and financial weight of his team into Wiggins's bid for glory. As to whether Wiggins's best could be enough to win the Tour, he said: "I think people always see the reasons why they can't win. I have always been someone who thinks, 'Why can't I?' That has always been my guiding philosophy, so my answer is 'Why not?'" * Reuters
