Cycling:Failing in Team Sky's first Tour de France has driven Bradley Wiggins to the verge of a first British success in Paris on Sunday. The 32-year-old, who finished a British best of fourth in the 2009 Tour, is set to take a lead of two minutes five seconds into the final five days of racing, with the race set to resume in Wednesday's 197-kilometre route from Pau to Bagneres-de-Luchon.
The 16th stage and Thursday’s 17th stage in the Pyrenees, plus Saturday’s 53.5km time-trial to Chartres, south of Paris, are set to decide the winner of the yellow jersey, with Wiggins the incumbent. Wiggins was British squad Team Sky’s marquee signing for their debut season, but crumbled to a 24th-placed finish in the 2010 Tour, upgraded to 23rd when Alberto Contador was stripped of the title.
He crashed out of the 2011 Tour with a broken collarbone, but now is in pole position to stand atop the podium on the Champs-Elysees on Sunday.
“I felt a few years ago I was failing as an athlete,” Wiggins said. “I never really fulfilled my potential and I think the last few years, with the right people around me (at Team Sky), I’ve started to realise my potential.”
It is difficult to understand how a three-time Olympic champion on the track can consider himself a failure, but since moving to Team Sky, under Dave Brailsford and Shane Sutton, performance director and head coach at British Cycling, respectively, he has matured on the road.
Wiggins added: “That (the track) is where I lived in my comfort zone, but I was capable of so much more and the people around me were aware of that. I’ve always had the engine, it’s just getting those people to get that out of me. That’s taken time, it’s taken a few years. Now we’re leading the Tour de France with five days to go.”
Brailsford, also the Team Sky principal, believes without the struggle of two years ago, Wiggins and the British team, whose aim was to win the Tour with a British rider within five years, might not be in their present position.
Brailsford said: “Out of failure you get a real chance to move forward. I think if he’d run eighth, or seventh, in the Tour in 2010, would we be here now? I don’t think we would. We’d have thought we were doing all right.”
Wiggins is in a commanding position, with Chris Froome second and the nearest hostile challenger, Italian Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas-Cannondale), 2mins 23secs behind in third place. But Wiggins is the superior time-trial rider of all the overall hopefuls and the next two mountain days, particularly Thursday’s summit finish at Peyragudes, is likely to be the main chance to dethrone the Londoner.
Brailsford finds it difficult to comprehend hypothetical questions about Paris, because there is still a race to be won. Brailsford said: “The closer you get, the more risk we have of the C-word, which is complacency.”
A C-word was among the expletives which marked Wiggins’ first day in the yellow jersey, which he is set to wear for a ninth day tomorrow. Should he keep the maillot jaune until Paris he will have worn it for 13 days and will join his hero Miguel Indurain as a Tour winner.
Five-time champion Indurain sent Wiggins a neckerchief he has worn for the Pamplona bull run, signed with a good luck message and embroidered with the crest of the local saint. Wiggins knows he will need more than luck and will require the full support of his team to emulate Indurain. That includes Froome, who is having to bide his time despite it being possible that he too could win the 2012 Tour.
Wiggins added: “This is a star team. We’ve got the world champion and each rider in their own right is capable of something in the Tour de France. I am part of this team and always want to be part of it to the end of my career. It is about the team being successful. I was the one given the role to lead the team at this year’s Tour and I took the responsibility. What is important is the team succeeds, otherwise there is no point in me being in the team if it’s all about me. It’s never just been about me.”
Unavoidably Wiggins has been the focus of attention, with around 200 media straining to hear his every word on the lawn of the Team Sky hotel in Pau. “It’s a bit like being in a goldfish bowl,” Wiggins said.