Free Bradley Wiggins by John Deering Page B

his goals of World and Olympic glory just when he should have been reaching greater heights.
    Brad was called to a crisis meeting with Peter Keen, Dave Brailsford and Simon Jones. Reminding them all unintentionally that he was still a callow 22-year-old, Wiggins blew his top, suggesting
that his medal haul was pretty good, thank you very much, and they should be grateful for what he’d done; not so critical. And it was his ball and he was taking it home. The quartet looked at
each other for a few minutes as the dust settled, then began calmly to map a way out of the woods. Before he knew it, Brad was part of the solution and no longer part of the problem. He found
himself signing up to a new credo that had one intention: making him Olympic Individual Pursuit Champion at the Athens Olympics, which were now less than two years away.
    The main plank of this ambitious plan was the newly retired maestro, Chris Boardman. Ten years after his own Olympic success had inspired the new Wiggins, The Professor was hired to mentor his
protégé to success in Athens.
    If Brad had expected a few cosy phone calls and the odd chat on a long ride, though, he was mistaken. Boardman brought his single-minded scientific approach along with him and spent all day
every day working on or with his charge, notating every training ride, every race performance and, most of all, every conversation. Boardman was a man on a mission and was going to be on
Wiggins’s case every minute of every day until the destiny of that gold medal was decided. A montage scene of Brad as Rocky Balboa punching huge haunches of meat while Chris Boardman in the
Burgess Meredith role looks on holding a stopwatch and urging more and more effort is irresistible.
    Brad had somebody else in his corner, too. He’d met Cath after the Commonwealth Games, a Lancashire girl who’d been around cycling all her life. They’d known each other through
association on various junior squads for a few years, but now the two of them were in love and by the end of 2002 they were living together. Brad shelved plans to return to his miserable French
existence and spent his second year with FDJ commuting to races from Manchester while Cath finished her degree. Just like his explosive arrival on the world track scene, when it came to girls it
looked like Brad had managed to get it right first time.
    The year 2003 was immediately better without being easier. British bike fans had something to cheer about at the classics for the first time since Sean Yates’s retirement some years
previously, when Brad made storming albeit brief appearances at the front of the Tour of Flanders and the outrageous cobbles of the Arenberg forest in Paris–Roubaix. From the northern
greyness he headed south for the colour of the Giro d’Italia and his first grand tour. It was all part of Boardman’s plan for Olympic domination and FDJ were only too happy to have
their second-year pro bolster the team. French teams are notoriously disinterested in the Tour of Italy, so getting a spot was no scramble. Wiggins hauled himself over more mountains and was
pleased with his performance over the three weeks. It ended a little disappointingly when he was part of a large group eliminated for finishing marginally outside the time limit on the last big
mountain stage. The organisers were expected to allow them to continue but chose not to; it is their right, but not the tradition. The eighteen stages Wiggins had completed would be a source of
strength over the rest of the year.
    Given time off from FDJ, as he was not part of their Tour de France plans, Wiggins trained like a demon for seven weeks then travelled with Team GB to Stuttgart for the World Track Championships
in great form and full of confidence. There was no Brad McGee to worry about this time; a strong Tour de France for the FDJ leader had turned a little sour afterwards as he was tired and fell ill,
missing the chance to take on Wiggins in the