‘It’s a fantastic position to be in after the first week and two tough days down. Now we have the time-trial and then a rest day, so it’s certainly some of the toughest stages ticked off.’
Bradley Wiggins
To wake up and see the yellow jersey at the foot of your bed sounds like Christmas – but not to a Team Sky rider immersed in the Brailsford mantra: ‘You don’t think about the outcome. You don’t think “what if I win?”, “what if I lose?”. You focus on the process, and deliver that focus on an hour-by-hour, day-by-day basis. You try to remove the emotional thinking and go into logical mode.’
Yes, it was day one for Wiggins in the yellow jersey, but there were still 13 more days to go. The hard work to defend the coveted jersey was about to begin. ‘From then on, everyone in the team was a helper – Bernie, Christian, even Cav would go back for water bottles on warm days or raincapes when it was wet,’ noted sport director Servais Knaven.
For Wiggins, it meant more pre-race attention, chaperones to take him to the start line, podium presentations and post-race media duties, which in turn meant not travelling back on the team bus but returning in the car with Knaven and a carer. Becoming the ‘star’ can be isolating. His public demeanour may have looked pensive with the responsibility, but inside the haven of the team bus he was the same Brad, the remorseless mimic. ‘He was often hilarious, our comic relief every day,’ said Porte. After all, he was used to this business of leading stages. As Brailsford says: ‘Bradley’s matured. When he’s in the zone, he becomes very focused. He’s tried different things over the years. He’s pieced it all together. He understands what it takes to deliver. When he is in that focused state, he can seem aloof, but he isn’t. He’s … remarkable.’
The order in which the Team Sky train would work was this: Knees and Eisel pulled at the front on the flat, then Boasson Hagen put in his turn, followed by Porte, Rogers, Froome and Wiggins as they progressed towards the final ascent. In the mountain stages, Sky very often still had four or five riders, when other teams were down to only one or two. Clearly all the team members were in superlative condition.
‘The way we work is to analyse the demands of the event and work back from there,’ explains Tim Kerrison. ‘And events vary greatly between different races and also from year to year, so next year’s Tour will have different demands to this year’s. We analyse the performance capabilities of our riders, and then tailor the training programmes around prioritising the development of the areas where the riders are in most need of improvement. This is a year-round process which will start in the early season training in November, December, January – including the team camps in Mallorca in December and January – but will continue throughout the season. With the Tour group we tried to structure the racing season to have bigger in-season training blocks between races, and it was in the training camps that we held during these blocks that a lot of the really intense, specific training was done. For Brad, one of the many areas we worked on was developing his explosive power.
‘This year our two lead riders were the strongest two time triallers (Brad was first and Chris came second in both long time trials), and they were the strongest two climbers. In terms of physical condition, this requires the ability to maintain a high power output for a sustained period for time trialling, and a high power-to-weight output for a sustained period for climbing. So the primary aim of our training was to increase the guys’ ability to maintain a very high power output for up to an hour, whilst maintaining a low body weight and lean body composition. Aside from Brad and Chris, the rest of the team were also in great condition such that they were able to provide support long into every stage.’
The first day in yellow was tough, but at the end of it it was job done. ‘The boys were incredible again today and really marshalled the race,’ said Wiggins. ‘They set us up to be able to go with the others on that last climb.’
‘It’s a fantastic position to be in after the first week and two tough days down. Now we have the time-trial and then a rest day, so it’s certainly some of the toughest stages ticked off.’
Bradley Wiggins
