Bradley Wiggins: My Time by Wiggins Bradley

Author:Wiggins, Bradley [Wiggins, Bradley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781448161393
Publisher: Yellow Jersey
Published: 2012-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

* * *

IN THE FIRING LINE

MY FIRST STAGE in the yellow jersey was a hard day into Switzerland, up and down constantly, finishing at the little town of Porrentruy. Physically, it included the hardest point of the whole Tour for me. It was a short day, just under 160km, so the race was on from the off, but the support I had from the boys was unbelievable, particularly Christian Knees. We hit the last climb before the drop to the finish and Lotto really pushed us hard. Jurgen Van Den Broeck was still annoyed from the day before because he’d dropped his chain on the run in to Planche des Belles Filles, so he got his teammate Jelle Vanendert – the little climber with the moustache who won the stage to Luz Ardiden in the 2011 Tour – to make the pace on the front and between them they ripped the bunch to pieces.

There were only five or six of us left over the top on that last climb, a short steep one. I felt I was close to getting dropped off the group towards the end. But I was riding a super-light bike and a few days later I realised that it had cracked under the bottom bracket so it was flexing like crazy and that’s why I was finding it so hard. But that’s the point about the Tour: the race is never done and dusted. Something can always happen. After that little moment I felt fine, and we had a healthy scrap into the finish, Van Den Broeck and Cadel attacking, me chasing them down quite comfortably. It was like being a junior again, racing for the hell of it.

I didn’t give much away when I had that brief crisis on the climb. I don’t think Cadel can have known how I was feeling; he shouldn’t have been able to tell. I remember as we went over the top, Nibali looked round to see if he was there; I shut my mouth as if I wasn’t hurting, and then he turned to the front again. In that situation, you just try and soak up the pain, not show it. There’s a lot of that in cycling. There’s a lot of bluffing midway through the Tour, because you don’t want to give anything away. You don’t want to give anyone a reason to think, the next day, ‘I’m going to try and attack although I normally wouldn’t.’ You always want to keep them thinking, ‘Damn, he looked strong there.’

With that Swiss stage over, I began thinking about the next key day: the Besançon time trial. I just wanted to get back to the hotel and get on with preparing for the time trial. Coming on top of La Planche des Belles Filles, Porrentruy had been a hard day, and I didn’t want to stick around at the finish doing all the press interviews. But as the yellow jersey of the Tour de France, you have no option.

The

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