Sky’s the Limit: Wiggins and Cavendish: The Quest to Conquer the Tour de France. Richard Moore
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the month of July 2008. In Newport, holed up in Celtic Manor, was the British track team, now in ‘lock-down’ mode, and almost to a man and woman recording world-class times while training on the nearby Newport Velodrome, with the Olympics only weeks away. And in France was Mark Cavendish: the hottest property in world cycling.
Following stage 14, on 19 July, Cavendish abandoned the Tour in order to remain fresh and fit for the Olympics. He would ride the madison with Bradley Wiggins in Beijing, though at this point, and unknown to all but a few people, Wiggins’ participation in the Olympics was in doubt due to a virus that left him bed-bound for six days.
Brailsford and Sutton had a lot on their plate. The deal with Sky was done, and on 24 July the satellite broadcaster was announced as the new ‘principal partner’ of British Cycling. A five-year, ‘multi-million pound partnership’ encompassed every level of cycling, from encouraging participation to grassroots, to talent development, to elite; and every discipline, from BMX to mountain biking, track and road racing. The wider goal was to get Britain back on its bike – to continue a process that London’s 2007 Grand Départ may have started, of transforming the country’s cycling culture, and encouraging a million more people to ride bikes over the next five years. ‘I believe this partnership will create a step change for cycling,’ said Brailsford. ‘Working together, we can take elite cycling to new heights and get more people involved in the sport at all levels.’
The track sprinters Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton – both of whom would go on to win gold medals in Beijing, in Hoy’s case three – fronted the launch of the Sky partnership. There was no mention of the sponsorship extending to a professional road team.
But Brailsford and Sutton both knew – despite their later assertions to the contrary – that the partnership with Sky was a forerunner to a professional team. Wiggins knew. And Cavendish knew. All were clear, too, that Cavendish would be the leader, the talisman; the fulcrum of the new team, the plans for which Brailsford had brought forward. In Bourg-en-Bresse he identified 2013 as the likely launch date, following the London Olympics. Yet in May 2008, as negotiations progressed with Sky, Brailsford revised that: the team would hit the road in 2010, he said.
Cavendish’s four stage wins at the Tour, which followed two stage wins in the Giro d’Italia, confirmed the wisdom behind a plan that would see Britain’s first major league professional team led by the world’s best sprinter, and most prolific winner. One of Brailsford’s trump cards was Rod Ellingworth, Cavendish’s coach. Cavendish rode for Bob Stapleton’s Columbia-High Road team – a new team that Stapleton, the Californian millionaire, had salvaged from the ashes of the old T-Mobile outfit, later to become Columbia-HTC, then HTC-Columbia. But Ellingworth was still the man Cavendish turned to, still the big brother figure, who managed his training and gave him tactical coaching. Ellingworth was also the man who, when Cavendish was at the Academy, instilled in him the understanding that, in order to win, he had to lead; and that in order to lead, he had to act like a leader. It meant accepting the responsibility, and handling the pressure, of having eight teammates sacrifice their own chances for him. ‘There aren’t many who can take on that responsibility,’ says Ellingworth. ‘But Cav can.’
But in the run-up to the Tour, and before the British Olympic team departed for the Newport holding camp, Cavendish and Sutton, both combustible characters, had one of their fairly frequent bust-ups. It owed to Sutton’s repeated assertions, in public and in private, that Cavendish would lead the new British team. Cavendish took exception to the assumption. He felt his involvement was being taken for granted. The upshot was that Cavendish travelled to the 2008 Tour in a fiery, belligerent frame of mind. ‘Shane had bawled him out and Cav was asserting his authority,’ as one insider puts it. ‘The team was to have been built around Cav. But he went to the Tour with a “fuck you” attitude towards Shane and British Cycling.’
And it was this, perhaps, that proved decisive when, midway through the Tour, Cavendish was offered a new two-year contract by Stapleton. It was a contract that would also give his team an option on a third year (taking him into 2011), and it was worth €750,000 a year. When it was offered to him, Cavendish signed it. He told no one.
‘He’s done what?!’
Brailsford and Sutton were walking across the Celtic Manor golf course when they found out. Cavendish, having arrived in Newport, admitted a little sheepishly to having signed the new contract. When Brailsford and Sutton found out, their reaction was one of shock, disbelief and horror. It would mean – after Beijing – going back to the drawing board.
Then there was Wiggins. In what could almost be a metaphor for his and Cavendish’s respective status at the time, while Cavendish was basking in the glory of having won four stages in the Tour, Wiggins was bed-bound fighting a virus.
And when Wiggins wasn’t ill, Sutton, who had long acted as a father figure to him, was keen to persuade him to commit to the new team, too.
Wiggins was by now a teammate of Cavendish’s at Columbia-High Road. They had ridden together at the Giro in May, Wiggins as a member of Cavendish’s lead-out ‘train’ – the group of teammates that organised themselves at the front in the closing kilometres, forming a team pursuit-style line, with Cavendish positioned at the rear, ready to unleash his sprint in the final 200 metres. It was the kind of riding in close formation, and the kind of fast effort, that Wiggins was brilliant at. Great track rider that he was, he was blessed with the speed and bike-handling skills that only come from hours spent riding in circles around a velodrome. No question, he could be a valuable member of Cavendish’s train. And in some respects that made sense for Wiggins, too. At the Giro he appreciated having a specific role and an actual job to do – something he hadn’t had in his French teams. But there was a problem: Wiggins did not want to become a member of Cavendish’s train in a team that he feared would become ‘the Cav show’. He did not regard that as ‘career progression’.
Wiggins was attracted to the idea of joining David Millar’s Slipstream team. While with High Road he could only see a future as a bit part player in the Cav show, with Slipstream (re-named Garmin-Slipstream on the eve of the 2008 Tour) he would be freer to do his own thing (whatever that might be – Wiggins wasn’t sure). Garmin offered Wiggins a two-year contract worth €350,000 a year – around €200,000 a year more than he was on at High Road.
And so in Newport, as well as having to fight a virus, Wiggins faced a dilemma. With the Olympics approaching, and Wiggins very publicly aiming for three gold medals – in the pursuit, team pursuit, and finally with Cavendish in the madison – there was always the possibility that success in Beijing could increase his earning power. Then again, in the world of professional road cycling, Olympic track medals might be worth a little, but not very much. In the meantime, the offer from Garmin was good, the security of a two-year deal appealing; but Sutton urged Wiggins not to sign – or to sign for only one year. Brailsford even showed him a fax from Sky, to prove the money would be there to set up the team.
But, to Wiggins – with his wife, Cath, and their young family also weighing heavily on his mind – requesting one year instead of the two on the table from Garmin seemed counter-intuitive. His career to date, in which he’d resolutely focused on pursuit racing for the best part of a decade, suggested he was not, by instinct, a risk-taker. Now, as he prepared to fly to Beijing, probably did not feel like the time to start gambling. He had to make a decision before the Olympics. So in Newport, in early August 2008, Wiggins agreed to spend the next two years with Garmin.
In Beijing, Brailsford and his team were lauded. They won as many gold medals – eight – as Italy won across all sports, and one more than France. Wiggins won two of the three gold medals he’d set his heart on, with the only disappointment – indeed, the entire team’s only disappointment – coming in the madison. There, a tired Wiggins, riding his third event, failed to fire, and he and Cavendish were never in the race, finally finishing ninth. Cavendish ended the meeting as the only British track cyclist not to win a medal; and he was disgusted, saying he felt ‘let down’ by Wiggins and by British Cycling. He wished he’d never pulled out of the Tour de France.
Lanesborough Hotel, London, February 2009
‘Morning, gents,’ says Dave Brailsford.