bradley wiggins tour de france 2013

Bradley Wiggins out of 2013 Tour de France

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Team Sky has announced Sir Bradley Wiggins will not start this year's Tour de France. The defending champion has been taken out of running due to a knee injury after recovering from the illness he picked up at the Giro d'Italia.

Sir Dave Brailsford said in a press release; "With illness, injury and treatment Brad has gone past the point where he can be ready for the Tour. It's a big loss but, given these circumstances, we won't consider him for selection."

"He hasn't been able to train hard since the Giro and now he needs further rest. Whilst we all know these things happen in sport, it doesn't take away from the fact that this is a huge disappointment for everyone in the team - and above all for Brad."

"It's incredibly sad to have the reigning champion at Team Sky but not lining up at the Tour. But he's a champion, a formidable athlete and will come back winning as he has before"

Sir Bradley Wiggins said; "It's a huge disappointment not to make the Tour. I desperately wanted be there, for the team and for all the fans along the way - but It's not going to happen.

"I can't train the way I need to train and I'm not going to be ready. Once you accept that, it's almost a relief not having to worry about the injury and the race against time.

"I've been through this before, when I broke my collarbone, so I know how it works. I'll get this sorted, set new goals for this season and focus on those."

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Wiggins had targetted the Giro d'Italia this season, but after a promising start he slipped back as he succumbed to illness. He eventually pulled out after stage 12, unable to compete in the terrible conditions as illness took hold.

Before the Giro had even started Wiggins had thrown a spanner in team Sky's Tour preparation when he said he would like a shot at winning the Tour if he was selected. Although he admitted the decision was ultimately down to the team, he cast doubt on the original plan that he would work for Chris Froome after Froome had worked for him last year.

Wiggins' statement drew a response from Froome who put out his own statement confirming the fact that he had been assured team leadership at the Tour. The withdrawal of Wiggins from Tour selection may see the loss of one of Sky's strongest riders, but it does put to bed any questions over leadership.

On Wiggins's current condition, Team Sky's Doctor Richard Freeman said: "The chest infection that caused his withdrawal from the Giro has responded to treatment and rest. It has completely cleared up. However,

further medical investigations on the knee injury that we were managing

at the Giro showed the condition was more significant than we thought."

needed intensive treatment and, whilst it will be fully resolved,

Bradley now needs to rest completely for five days before a gradual,

return to full training over a period of two to three weeks."

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Editor of Cycling Weekly magazine , Simon has been working at the title since 2001. He fell in love with cycling 1989 when watching the Tour de France on Channel 4, started racing in 1995 and in 2000 he spent one season racing in Belgium. During his time at CW (and Cycle Sport magazine) he has written product reviews, fitness features, pro interviews, race coverage and news. He has covered the Tour de France more times than he can remember along with two Olympic Games and many other international and UK domestic races. He became the 130-year-old magazine's 13th editor in 2015.

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Days of challenging in Grand Tours may be over for Sir Bradley Wiggins

Sir Bradley Wiggins's concession that he may not race the Tour de France to win again does not mark the end of his career, but it is most likely the beginning of the final phase.

At the end of April, when he discussed the possibility of going for the double of Giro d'Italia and Tour de France , the 2012 Tour winner was in upbeat mood; too upbeat as it proved. As the build-up to the Tour got underway, cycling's Modfather was far more reflective over a coffee in a Lancashire farm-shop café.

After winning the Olympic time-trial gold medal last year, Wiggins said he did not know what could top it. When he wrote his autobiographical account of 2012, My Time, he made it clear he was unsure quite how motivated he would be for the 2013 Tour, and that he feared returning in anything other than his best form.

The rise of Chris Froome means that he is no longer Team Sky's only leader, or indeed their best option, this year. ButHowever, the decision to leave Wiggins out of Team Sky's line-up for the Tour de France did not come easily to Sir Dave Brailsford, who was well aware of the controversy that would ensue and who also feared the effect it might have on his rider. But Wiggins said finding out he would not be in the Tour had come as a relief to him. "When I knew what the problem was, and I knew it wasn't going to happen, it was a weight off my shoulders," he admitted.

"The problem" was a burst bursa at the end of the IT band, where the thigh muscle is joined into his left knee, which was "inflamed, with the liquid not going anywhere". The knee became an issue after the Giro stage finish in Pescara, a week into the race, and five days before Wiggins eventually withdrew with an additional chest infection. "I could have pushed on with the chest, but I would have been going into the unknown with the knee," he said. "It was at that stage I started thinking about the Tour de France."

For those who wonder whether he might have won the Giro without any problems, Wiggins's own view is that the foul weather and the fine form of Vincenzo Nibali would probably have meant that remaining one of his dreams. Initially, Wiggins felt that if he stopped in the Giro and took a few days off he could regain fitness in time to race the Tour of Switzerland as a build-up to the Tour. When that notion was dashed by a specialist, he had no option but to accept that wearing the No1 dossard on the roads of France this July would not happen.

"It was a great decision by the team," he said. "I wasn't put under pressure as defending champion. That would have been disastrous because of the element of the unknown – would the knee hold? Even if I'd been going to the Tour to do a job for Chris Froome, would I have been able to? Putting someone in the race because they've won the year before ... those years are gone. It's about performance – about picking the best nine riders."

As for what will happen once the race leaves Corsica, Wiggins believes Froome can win, but is intrigued by what Alberto Contador might have in the tank. "There's something about Contador," he said. "I wouldn't underestimate him. Either he's going to peak at the Tour, or he's not ready. Physically Chris is the favourite, but the Tour is the Tour – one crash and it's over. The first stages in Corsica will be a shitfight."

While the peloton fights its way through France, Wiggins will divide his time between his Lancashire home and the roads of Majorca, with his eyes on the time-trial world championship at the end of September. But the years of Bradley Wiggins targeting the Grand Tours may now be over.

Wiggins was speaking to the Guardian at a reception to launch an attempt on the Etape du Tour by a group of star rugby players including Paul Sampson, Kris Radlinski and Paul Sculthorpe in aid of the Joining Jack charity, which campaigns to raise awareness of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. For more information visit www.joiningjack.co.uk

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Bradley Wiggins: A lot of my cycling career was about running away from my past

Former Tour France winner talks about his 'haunting experience' with his father, imposter syndrome, and how his son has become his hero

Daniel Benson

Editor in chief.

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Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) won the Tour de France in 2012

Former Tour de France winner Bradley Wiggins has told the BBC that a huge part of his success on the road and track was "intrinsically linked to my father and the lack of a father figure as a child".

In a frank and emotional interview with the BBC , Wiggins opened up about what drove him to success and the imposter syndrome that affected him off the bike.

Wiggins became the first British rider to win the men’s Tour de France in 2012 and won five Olympic gold medals during a glittering career.

However, behind the successful athlete lay an individual with deep emotional trauma stemming from his childhood and the unhealthy, and ultimately tragic relationship he had with his late father.

Wiggins was knighted in 2013, a year after his Tour and Olympic gold in London, and it was at that point that his off-bike struggles began to hit home.

“I really wanted to be successful and I guess that stemmed from my family valuing achievement. The day I received it [the knighthood] was when this syndrome hit me like a brick. I couldn't receive it on the day when most athletes did due to racing commitments and I was there with a lot of military personnel who were getting their bravery awards and Victoria crosses. Queuing up with them was quite a humbling experience. I felt anything but a hero that day. That was quite a fraudulent day when it came to feeling like a deserved to receive a knighthood,” Wiggins told the BBC .

Wiggins began cycling as a child and followed in the footsteps of his father, Gary Wiggins, an Australian rider who raced in Europe during the 1970s and 1980s. He left the Wiggins household when Bradley Wiggins was a small child and there was no contact between the pair for almost 15 years.

When Bradley Wiggins began to gain a name for himself on the track as a teenager his father got back in contact and travelled from Australia to Belgium to watch his son race. It became a seminal moment in the British rider’s young life. He was 19 at the time.

“A lot of my cycling career was about running away from my past. It was a distraction, a good distraction. A lot of it was intrinsically linked to my father and the lack of a father figure as a child,” he said.

“I remember writing notes on the back of photos I had of him when I was about 12 or 13 years old and letters to this person who was out there, or who wasn't out there because we’d heard all sorts of stories about him being murdered and in prison. He came over to Belgium and a race I was doing, and I’ll never forget it. It was probably the hardest day of my life, meeting him.

“Within a week he said: ‘You’ll never be as good as your old man’. I was in the centre of the track in Gent, Belgium. I was racing against men and shining and he couldn’t handle it, the attention on me. He came in close, and squeezed my arm, so no one else could hear. It was quite a haunting experience. From that day on there was this drive for so long after to be better than him.”

Wiggins' father died in 2008 after a fight at a party that resulted in an open verdict from the coroner’s court in Australia.

His son would go on to become one of the most well-known and successful athletes ever produced in Great Britain. However, behind the athlete was a person struggling with their mental health and imposter syndrome.

“I needed help. I was really struggling with my mental health. Funnily enough, it was when I was my most funny and on the television and no one knew. It was like the tears of a clown. I was great on the outside, funny, manic, the star of the show and crying behind closed doors.”

When asked by the BBC what imposter syndrome means, Wiggins answered: “An inability to believe that your achievements, that your training and hard work have resulted in you being successful.”

In 2019 Wiggins hit a low. He’d retired from the sport in 2016 but was finding it hard to reconcile the person he was with the former athlete and his traumatic past.

“I was losing the plot and I smashed all my trophies, my BBC Sports Personality trophy, my knighthood trophy. Not my medals and achievements from cycling but the things that came from a byproduct.”

Wiggins now works with various charities in the UK and talks openly about his battles with mental health. His main passion, however, is being a father to his two children, one of whom, Ben, has already made a name for himself on the track and road as a promising rider.

Read more: Ben Wiggins: The dream is to ride for Ineos Grenadiers one day

“It brightens my world up watching him cycle. I’ve got this healthy relationship with him. I’ll always be his biggest fan but I can still stick my arm around him and say ‘Don’t go out on your bike today, have a day off’. He is amazing, he’s an inspiration. It makes me really emotional because he’s my hero in a way.”

Watch the full Wiggins interview here .

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Wiggins Becomes First Briton to Win Tour

By Jon Brand

• July 22, 2012

PARIS — It was an occasion to smile, but Bradley Wiggins walked through a hotel lobby in Toulouse, France, on Friday morning with pursed lips and steely eyes. Though the final mountain stage of the Tour de France had ended the night before — and Wiggins, with a substantial lead on his closest rival, Vincenzo Nibali, was in all likelihood the race winner — he was not ready to let his guard down.

On Sunday, he could finally drop the businesslike facade. Before riding into Paris as the first British champion of the Tour de France, Wiggins sat on his bike at the start in Rambouillet, southwest of Paris, joking with other riders. It was the culmination of a strong and measured performance in this grueling three-week, 2,173-mile race, which began on June 30 in Liège, Belgium.

Wiggins, 32, controlled the Tour from the end of the first week on with the help of his teammates on the talented Team Sky squad, most notably the fellow Briton Christopher Froome, a Kenyan-born 27-year-old who finished second over all. Froome, along with third-place Vincenzo Nibali, an Italian with Liquigas- Cannondale, also stood atop the podium on the Champs-Élysées Sunday. But it was Wiggins who was the most elated.

“Going back as a child, watching the Tour on telly from the age of 10, 11, 12, all through the Indurain years, dreaming that one day you would win the Tour,” he said at a news conference on Saturday night. “But you never really think it’s possible. What chance does a kid growing up in central London ever have to win the Tour?”

Since 1986, when the American Greg LeMond became the first rider from an English-speaking country to win the Tour, there have been others — including Lance Armstrong and the Australian Cadel Evans of BMC Racing, who fell short of defending his title this year.

While Britain has dominated in track cycling, the discipline in which Wiggins started his racing career and won multiple Olympic medals, it has historically struggled on the road, particularly at the Tour.

The first British rider to wear the yellow jersey was Tom Simpson, who died while climbing Mont Ventoux during a stage of the 1967 Tour.

Though Barry Hoban and Robert Millar found success in the 1970s and ’80s, respectively, the sport was hardly popular among Britons — or any other English speakers.

“My first Tour in’84, not one person from start to finish cheered for me,” said Allan Peiper, an Australian who rode with Millar and is now a sport director for Garmin-Sharp. “The Tour was not like it is now. We were a band of 10 foreigners riding in a mostly European or French race.”

The Tour’s popularity has steadily increased across the Channel since. The Union Jack was a staple along the racecourse this year, from the narrow, windy roads of Belgium to the hot and sunny Pyrenees.

But the flags would likely not be there, nor would Wiggins be Tour champion, without the support of Team Sky, a British squad founded in 2009 by Dave Brailsford, also the performance director of Britain’s national cycling team.

Wiggins was recruited to Sky from Team Garmin-Slipstream after a fourth-place Tour finish in 2009 — matching Robert Millar, who finished fourth in 1984, for the best-ever finish by a Briton to that point. Despite the prerace hype that Wiggins would win that Tour, he finished a disappointing 23rd over all.

After dedicating himself to a rigorous training regime in 2011, with the help of Tim Kerrison, the former coach of the Australian national swimming team, Wiggins returned to the Tour determined to succeed. But in the seventh stage, he crashed, breaking a collar bone, and was left watching Evans win the title on television.

Everything finally came together this year. Wiggins won three major stage races this spring, becoming the third rider to capture both Paris-Nice and the Critérium du Dauphiné in the same year. (Like Wiggins, the other two — cycling legends Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx — also went on to win the Tour in July.)

In those victories, he combined methodical mountain rides with explosive time trial performances — a formula that he and Team Sky replicated this Tour, grinding away rivals like Evans, Nibali and the Belgian Jurgen Van Den Broeck of Lotto-Belisol throughout the three weeks.

With three time trials totaling about 60 miles, this year’s course was considered to be less advantageous for climbers than in previous races.

Indeed, Wiggins — whose specialty is the time trial — padded his advantage by winning the two lengthy individual races against the clock, including the final time trial Saturday in Chartres.

But the mountains remained crucial. With his teammate Froome leading the way, Wiggins used the first mountain stage on July 7, which finished atop La Planche des Belles Filles, to take the yellow jersey from Fabian Cancellara, who had worn it since the race’s outset. Four days later, on Stage 11, he knocked Evans out of contention on the final climb to La Toussuire in the French Alps.

The BMC Racing captain, who had attacked earlier in the day, was unable to keep up with Froome and Wiggins as they sped up on the ascent. Evans was able to avoid total catastrophe, however, thanks to his 23-year-old American teammate Tejay van Garderen, who helped pace him up the climb.

Van Garderen, from Bozeman, Mont., had a phenomenal showing in his second Tour, finishing fifth overall and winning the white jersey as the race’s highest-placed rider under 25.

“It’s a nice little treat,” he said. “If you told me at the beginning of the Tour that I would get fifth place, I would have said you’re crazy.”

When the race visited the Pyrenees, which hosted the concluding mountain stages earlier this week, Vincenzo Nibali was the last remaining challenger. But even he was not strong enough to stay with Wiggins and Froome on Stage 17, the Tour’s last mountain test. As the duo steadily ascended to Peyragudes, a ski station near the France-Spain border, Nibali dropped back.

Toward the end of the climb, Froome showed that he had fresher legs than Wiggins, riding ahead of his team captain twice and gesturing for him to go faster. It was reminiscent of the scene on La Toussuire, when Froome had left Wiggins behind before being ordered back by team director Sean Yates.

Though Froome, who finished second to Wiggins’s third in the Vuelta a España last autumn, said during the race that it was a “very, very great sacrifice” for him to not challenge Wiggins for the title, the tension did not undercut the team’s goal: keeping yellow all the way to Paris.

Neither did the presence of sprinter Mark Cavendish, the world champion who rode this year’s race with a reduced lead-out train. Though Cavendish won just a single stage in the race’s sprint and crash-heavy first week, which saw many riders drop out, he made up for it following the mountains.

Mark Cavendish followed his win on Friday’s Stage 18 with a stellar finish Sunday on the Champs-Élysées, where he has won four years in a row. He positioned himself perfectly on the final turn toward the Champs-Élysées and comfortably cruised to the victory.

“I am very happy, it’s fantastic,” Cavendish said, in his best French, on television. “It’s the most beautiful boulevard in the world, especially for me.”

In recent years, the weather for the final stage of the Tour has been spectacular; Sunday was no exception. Under a bright blue sky, riders like Peter Sagan — the young Slovak phenom who won three stages and the green jersey for best sprinter — stepped up to the podium to receive their awards.

Thomas Voeckler, the race’s best climber, and the riders of RadioShack- Nissan-Trek, also took to the podium, but allegations of doping have been following them all race. Before the start, it was announced that Voeckler’s Europcar team was being investigated for the alleged use of corticosteroids during last year’s Tour; last Tuesday in Pau, Radioshack-Nissan-Trek rider Frank Schleck was pulled from the race after testing positive for a banned diuretic.

It was not the only doping news. On the eve of the Tour, the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced that it was charging Lance Armstrong and a number of associates with running a doping conspiracy during Armstrong’s run to seven straight Tour titles. During the race, it was revealed that a number of his former teammates were poised to testify against him, including Team BMC Racing’s George Hincapie, who completed his 17th and final Tour de France on Sunday. And on the first rest day, July 10, the Cofidis rider Rémy Di Gregorio was arrested by French police near Mâcon and was later charged for possessing doping-related material.

As the face of professional cycling during its biggest event, Wiggins was often asked about performance-enhancing drugs this Tour. On one occasion, he launched a profanity-laced tirade at a journalist who asked him about rumors that he was doping.

On Sunday, Wiggins was free, for the moment, from probing questions. With the Arc de Triomphe behind him, he grabbed a microphone to address the crowd and let loose.

“Some dreams do come true,” he said to roaring cheers. “And my mother over there, her son has won the Tour de France. Cheers, have a good trip home and don’t get too drunk.”

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Tour de France 2013: Why is it we love Sir Bradley Wiggins yet find current British Tour de France leader Chris Froome hard to warm to?

Wiggo was like watching paint dry but froome is riding with pure panache and instinct, article bookmarked.

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On paper, it had everything: the first British cyclist to conquer the most fabled summit in the world’s greatest race. Where Tom Simpson had failed 46 years earlier, falling dead on the slopes of Mont Ventoux, a yellow-clad Chris Froome had triumphed, powering up it with such attacking spirit he would need oxygen to recover.

Yet Froome’s exploits earned just a brief mention in that night’s sports bulletins. He struggled even to make the front of the following day’s sports sections. And where he has featured in the final week of a thrilling Tour, the story hasn’t been about victory in the making as often as it has been about talk of doping.

Rewind a year and the contrast is stark. Sir Bradley Wiggins, too, faced the suspicions that are Lance Armstrong’s most poisonous contribution to cycling. But he was a hero and his face seemed to beam daily from the news-stands. What does Froome have to do to get some love?

For a start, he could grow some sideburns, which isn’t as facile as it might sound. They are a symbol of something Wiggo had that his successor lacks – a winning personality.

Froome is the calm Austrian surgeon to Wiggins’ brash lead guitarist. Moreover, for a Kenyan-born man who grew up in South Africa and lives in Monaco, there is what might be called the Rusedski effect.

“I think the British public will always struggle with Chris Froome,” says Ned Boulting, who is covering his 10th Tour for ITV.

“He speaks with the wrong accent and his British heritage is paper-thin. I wonder if the British sporting public would have warmed more to the story of the first African to win the Tour.” But Froome, whose father was born in England, would have a PR mountain to climb even with a true Brit background.

Wiggins was the Olympic champion who grew up on a north London housing estate and nearly threw it all away to drink. His was the kind of sporting biography that editors dream about.

In this scenario, Froome becomes Kevin Pietersen to Wiggo’s Freddie Flintoff – arguably the better sportsman but less of a lad, and a bit South African.

The cricket analogy holds, too, when you consider the sports story that did make the front pages on Monday – England’s remarkable Test victory in the Ashes. Cycling might be booming, but it knows its place.

All of which is to say, poor Chris Froome. “It’s a shame,” Boulting says. “They are the opposite as men and riders. Eyes were drawn to Brad when he talked, but he was like watching paint dry as a rider. But Froome is riding with pure panache and instinct.”

Naturally we care less about the prospect of a second British Tour winner than the first, but Froome’s fighting spirit is earning him huge respect among fans still hooked on the Tour.

And in a Team Sky missing the strength in depth that Wiggins enjoyed, a victory this weekend would surely be the greater achievement – as Sunday night’s news bulletins will, hopefully, reflect.

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