One Stage at a Time: 2012

And so, with a rather heavy heart, I turn my attention to the golden summer of British cycling, 2012. Why the heavy heart? Partly because I feel it is a story so well versed that there is little new to add (although my forthcoming book has a line or two in it which may raise an eyebrow). But mostly, it’s because I regret how far interest in supporting road racing has fallen in the UK from the heights to which they were propelled by the successes first of Mark Cavendish, and then three years ahead of schedule, by Bradley Wiggins in winning the Tour de France. It seems incredible that scarcely a decade later, there are no continental teams in Britain, that our races hang by a thread, that ITV has opted out and that the cycling industry is in retreat.

A disclaimer that needs to be stated. It is reasonable to feel discomfort at some of the methods and practices which seemed to fall below the standards they had espoused when the management behind Team Sky first launched. Missing data from flakey laptops, mysterious deliveries of testosterone, jiffy bags with unknown contents, a lack of transparency, internal grudges between some of the key actors and contentious TUEs add up to a moderately sized heap of, well, what quite…it certainly scratches away at the lustre that summer at first seemed to reflect. Where you stand vis a vis Sky’s legacy is up to you, of course. Position those feelings on a sliding grey scale of your own, as close to virgin white as you wish, if that’s what you feel. Or not. I doubt much more will ever emerge now to clinch it either way.

But, this is not a reason to treat July 2012 differently, nor to hold it to a higher standard than other more blighted editions of the Tour. The race was a good one, not a vintage perhaps, though its place in the British sporting memory will endure in a highly particular manner. Elsewhere in the world it was perhaps less well admired. Nevertheless it held a good deal of intrigue, and there was a good deal of peripheral detail to flesh out the skeleton of a mostly neutralised GC race.

I say neutralised. But that’s to gloss over the carnage of La Toussuire, one of the greatest internecine spats in modern Tour history. Two versions of that famous climb exist: the real one, in which Chris Froome was called back. And the other hypothetical one, in which he rode flat-stick to the top. Would he have been in yellow at the end of the day? Quite possibly. Would he have won the Tour? Who knows.

The Froomes know. Both Chris, and Michelle (who has disappeared from social media finally after some pretty extraordinary views on Gaza). Back then she was unmarried Michelle Cound, but just as forthright on Twitter. Yes, it was Wag-Gate, cycling-style. It was also genuinely hilarious.

In the end, there was a tremendous intervention by Peta Cavendish (which I can no longer locate, sadly), which put everybody in their place. Anyway, all that happened when Twitter was still just a funny place to have a row in public, rather than a rancid cul-de-sac of empty hatred.

But that’s not the stage I want to focus on. My strongest memory of 2012 was the race to La Planche des Belles Filles, 5 days before. That was Chris Froome’s stage win, and at the same time the day that Wiggins took yellow. It was also one of the first times the climb had been used (was it actually the first? I can’t recall). Chris Boardman was just beginning his annoyingly good amateur photography phase. He took a picture of me riding to the top, framed against that famous backdrop of wooded hillsides beyond.

This was the 10th Tour de France I ever covered. I never imagined that I would see a mountain top finish won by a British rider, while piloting his teammate to the yellow jersey. Despite everything that their world champion colleague Mark Cavendish had already achieved, this still seemed improbable. Mountains were for Spanish riders, sometimes Italians and even the French. Not people from Kilburn and Kenya.

Sifting through images of that day, I stumble across this little video, which very happily sums up the mood after a week of the race. The guys singing are the “Doublet” guys, who are paid a pittance to put out the kilometres of advertising banners along the finishing straight every day. They work hard in the mornings and the evenings. They claim to hate the Tour de France, and yet you see the same guys coming back year after year. The afternoons are theirs, and they make use of them.

What else from 2012? Well, one day late on in the race, I climbed to the top of the Col d’Aspin with Matt Rendell and Chris. It was blisteringly hot and I got tremendously sunburnt. It was the first mountain top I had ever ridden to, and I was enormously proud. Many more have followed since then, but that’s another story for which I hold David Millar responsible.

Talking of David, he won stage 12. It was to be his last professional victory, and probably means more to him than any of the others, given his past. It came from a breakaway; one which he mastered to perfection, understanding how to play his opponents to his advantage and to their detriment. While he readied himself for the podium, he shouted across to me.

‘Ned, is it the anniversary of Tom Simpson’s death?’

It was July 13th. It had been 45 years. ‘Yes, David.’ He nodded, appreciative of the significance.

I think it was around then that John Bishop came to join us for a couple of days. This was around the time when British celebrities were queueing up to celebrate their cycling credentials. I very much you’d get that now. Anyway, he was fun. He posed for a picture with my colleagues Woody and Liam.

Then came the final time trial in Chartres, which won Wiggins the race by a handsome margin in the end. After the race, the ITV cameras were allowed preferential access to his post-stage massage in a very small Campanile hotel room, and then to a rather staged and stuffy post-race “celebration” that felt more like a funeral reception, so riven with divisions were the team.

At some point, while we waited for the riders to come to dinner, David’s sister Fran, who was high up in the management of Team Sky got a message from someone reminding her that it was the traditional obligation of the winning team at the Tour to hand out champagne to all the other teams in the convoy the following day in Paris. Sky had never won the Tour before, and the “best prepared team in the race” had not thought of that eventuality.

That was when, just because I was bored of waiting around, I volunteered to try and find some. Fran lent me Sky’s credit card and told me the PIN. And off I went in search of champagne.

It was Sunday evening. Everything was shut, save for hotel bars and restaurants. I went into every single one of them and asked for every bottle of they had on the premises, which was not much. Thus I trawled Chartres for an hour or so, until I had amassed a motley collection of random bottles, which the following day would be handed out from car to car in a possibly illegal tradition that Team Sky were only now experiencing.

No one could have guessed back then that they would win it 6 more times in the next 7 years. But not with Bradley Wiggins.