At last, it was the final day before the race hit the hills where Team Sky planned to ‘put the hurt on the rivals and open up the gas on the climbs’. In theory it was the last charge of the sprinters for a week or so, but, to Cavendish’s chagrin, the management did not want to risk the yellow jersey. His instinct urged him to duel with Greipel, Goss and co, but a puncture put him out of the picture. Froome, Eisel, Knees and Rogers were all towards the front protecting Wiggins, while Porte crashed three times and Boasson Hagen was caught up in one of the day’s string of crashes. No one could stop and take him up. The team, privately mindful that it was at about this stage last year that Wiggins crashed out, wanted to tick this day off and safely reach the end of a crazy, fraught week. It represented a psychological milestone.
‘I usually win an average of five stages on a Tour de France, but I had to take a back seat,’ a rueful Cavendish said later. ‘The yellow jersey is the most iconic symbol in sport. That was the team’s goal, and it had to take precedence. It was difficult for me because I’m not just any rider, I wanted to do the rainbow jersey proud. Our sport is unusual in that you get to represent a jersey for a year. It’s a big, big honour, and I wanted to do it proud every single time I wore it.’
When the 2012 Tour course was published in October 2011, Brailsford and Yates saw it played nicely into Wiggins’s strengths. ‘The courses tend either to have a lot of hard climbs or a mix of hard climbs with a significant number of time-trial kilometres like this year’s. On paper, if we were to create a course that would best suit Bradley, this would pretty much be it,’ conceded Brailsford.
‘Bradley hates the first week,’ said Yates. ‘It is not a matter of being nervous in the flatlands, more about wanting to get this week out of the way, to get into the mountains and start showing what we could do.’ Eisel – who Cavendish prizes as a ‘really clever bike rider’ – was a great asset in the first week’s mission of looking after Wiggins. Primarily Cavendish’s helper, he had proved to be a valuable team motivator in the ‘kill-or-be-killed’ jostle of the flatlands. ‘This year was the first time I’d worked with him,’ said Yates. ‘He’s a strong, experienced rider, but it wasn’t a given that he would be taken because of his form. As it turned out he rose to the occasion, rallying the troops and working hard for the team. Bradley spoke up at team meetings saying how great it was to have Bernie there.’
Safely protected by his team mates, Wiggins escaped the drama of a horrendous crash. ‘In a split second everything changed and all hell was let loose. Five minutes before that crash happened, Brad came right up to the front with Christian and it was one of the best moves he’s made so far,’ said a relieved Brailsford.
Chris Froome. Future Grand Tour contender. Age: 27. Nationality: Kenyan-born British. Career highlights (as of eve of 2012 Tour de France): 2nd overall and a stage winner in 2011 Vuelta a Espaňa; 3rd overall in Tour of Beijing.