Bradley Wiggins: Tour de Force - Book Review

Daniel Coyle's similarly titled Lance Armstrong: Tour de Force was a fantastic read, one of my favourite (at the time) cycling books. This is by a different author, John Deering and so is not to be confused with the former. However it is a real pleasurable read. It cleverly mixes a day-by-day run down of Wiggo's Tour Success in 2012 with a look at the rider's history and build up to the tour in a similar way to Coyle.

As an avid Tour follower and equally keen reader of cycling books a lot of it was visiting familiar ground already covered elsewhere. If you watched all the 2012 tour and have read Sky's The Limit and Bradley Wiggins autobiography (released a couple of years ago) then you will learn little from this book. But that isn't the only reason to read is it? Deering beautifully pulls all this information together and presents it in an enjoyable way that is like reading the best bits of three books and adding them to your own personal memories. He adds first hand tales from the tour as well as information gleaned from difference sources such as tweets and web site reports. Most importantly for me, he explained where the nickname of Frome Dog for Chris Frome came from. I first heard it on ITV4 when David Millar was interviewed. I thought it was his 'street' name for Frome. Turns out it was quoting a tweet from Frome's girlfriend as she felt his interests were playing second fiddle to Wiggin's ambitions "if you want loyalty get yourself a Frome dog". So now you know too, I may have taken away your "aha" moment but there is still plenty in this book to keep you entertained and is well worth a read.

Sky's The Limit - Book Review

I decided to read this book during the Tour this year (sorry for the late review) as I thought it would be great to have an insight in to the team and compare it to what I was seeing on TV. In a world of wanting everything now it's no surprise that I was frustrated at the lack of insight in to the team in its present state but that soon subsided as I read about everything that had got them to this point.

The book is set in the time of setting up Team Sky with their talisman, Bradley Wiggins signed and hoping to beat his previous year's outstanding achievement of finishing fourth in the tour. I think while David Brailsford and the team weren't naive enough to think they'd have instant success I think they probably dared hope they'd have something to shout about, something to show to say "here, this is what we've brought to the world of road racing".

In some respects they did bring new elements to the world of cycling, some of it visible to the fans (slick buses, outfits and cars), some of it visible to the competition (buying riders out of contracts in a football style - new to cycling) and some of it only visible to Team Sky and Richard Moore, the author of the book. Richard does mention that it isn't an authorised / official book and in that sense he doesn't suck up to Team Sky but does get pretty close access to them. His insight behind the scenes is certainly what makes this book a worthwhile purchase and the whole feel of the book goes along with the debut season Sky had. Upbeat and positive at the start followed by realisation that it's not all going to go as planned (something David Brailsford doesn't put up with for long) and the book and season ends with lessons learned and a new positive outlook to the future.

As a book it's a good read but it doesn't have the depth of some of Moore's other books, this is surely because it's like writing an autobiography before you've achieved anything - there's not much to tell. I wonder how it would read if it was written now...

More Than A Dream

There are somethings you hope will happen during your life time. I hope I will see England win the World Cup or European Championships, either I’m not fussy. I dream that one day Huddersfield Town will spend a season in the Premiership. However having followed the Tour de France since 1991, watching super human beings from various nations win the Tour I have never dreamed or hoped that a Brit would win the Tour. It was just so unbelievable I never imagined it was possible. Watching the tour year after year we were lucky if there was even a Brit racing the Tour and even then they rarely achieved anything great.

As time went on and we started to achieve some success with Boardman and Yates it still never occurred to me that we could win it or even contest it. That’s why 2009 is probably my favourite ever year of the tour. It was the year Bradley Wiggins allowed us to dream, that we could hope one day he, or another Brit could build on his 4^th in the Tour that year. I didn’t follow the Tour when Robert Millar finished fourth all those years ago and so this was the first time a Brit had finished within sight of the podium. Not only that but in 2009 Mark Cavendish showed that we could win a major jersey at the Tour by running Thor Hushovd close and winning stages for fun. His time would come surely and in 2011 the Tour organisers seem to have built the course to let him win it, I believe they even stated they didn’t want a sprinter to win as many stages as Cav had in the past and not win the Jersey. So sure enough, Cav won his ‘usual’ bag of stages and along with them he took the Green Jersey.

Did this inspire Wiggins that he could win the Yellow Jersey? Probably not, I think we have to give Wiggins more credit than that but it certainly can’t have held him back. Wiggins believed in himself, he might have surprised himself a bit in 2009 and then had to prove to himself it was no fluke. It’s always the hardest to do something for the first time, whether it’s the first to climb Everest or win a stage at the Tour. So much of that is belief. I think I watched the Tour and thought “wow, look at those super human beings”, Wiggo looked at it and thought “I want to do that” – “I can do that”. So some how from a position of having no challengers, we suddenly found ourselves with the Tour favourite. Who could have thought we had that in store!