characters, had one of their fairly frequent bust-ups. It owed to Sutton’s repeated assertions, in public and in private, that Cavendish would lead the new British team. Cavendish took exception to the assumption. He felt his involvement was being taken for granted. The upshot was that Cavendish travelled to the 2008 Tour in a fiery, belligerent frame of mind. ‘Shane had bawled him out and Cav was asserting his authority,’ as one insider puts it. ‘The team was to have been built around Cav. But he went to the Tour with a “fuck you” attitude towards Shane and British Cycling.’
And it was this, perhaps, that proved decisive when, midway through the Tour, Cavendish was offered a new two-year contract by Stapleton. It was a contract that would also give his team an option on a third year (taking him into 2011), and it was worth €750,000 a year. When it was offered to him, Cavendish signed it. He told no one.
‘He’s done what?!’
Brailsford and Sutton were walking across the Celtic Manor golf course when they found out. Cavendish, having arrived in Newport, admitted a little sheepishly to having signed the new contract. When Brailsford and Sutton found out, their reaction was one of shock, disbelief and horror. It would mean – after Beijing – going back to the drawing board.
Then there was Wiggins. In what could almost be a metaphor for his and Cavendish’s respective status at the time, while Cavendish was basking in the glory of having won four stages in the Tour, Wiggins was bed-bound fighting a virus.
And when Wiggins wasn’t ill, Sutton, who had long acted as a father figure to him, was keen to persuade him to commit to the new team, too.
Wiggins was by now a teammate of Cavendish’s at Columbia-High Road. They had ridden together at the Giro in May, Wiggins as a member of Cavendish’s lead-out ‘train’ – the group of teammates that organised themselves at the front in the closing kilometres, forming a team pursuit-style line, with Cavendish positioned at the rear, ready to unleash his sprint in the final 200 metres. It was the kind of riding in close formation, and the kind of fast effort, that Wiggins was brilliant at. Great track rider that he was, he was blessed with the speed and bike-handling skills that only come from hours spent riding in circles around a velodrome. No question, he could be a valuable member of Cavendish’s train. And in some respects that made sense for Wiggins, too. At the Giro he appreciated having a specific role and an actual job to do – something he hadn’t had in his French teams. But there was a problem: Wiggins did not want to become a member of Cavendish’s train in a team that he feared would become ‘the Cav show’. He did not regard that as ‘career progression’.
Wiggins was attracted to the idea of joining David Millar’s Slipstream team. While with High Road he could only see a future as a bit part player in the Cav show, with Slipstream (re-named Garmin-Slipstream on the eve of the 2008 Tour) he would be freer to do his own thing (whatever that might be – Wiggins wasn’t sure). Garmin offered Wiggins a two-year contract worth €350,000 a year – around €200,000 a year more than he was on at High Road.
And so in Newport, as well as having to fight a virus, Wiggins faced a dilemma. With the Olympics approaching, and Wiggins very publicly aiming for three gold medals – in the pursuit, team pursuit, and finally with Cavendish in the madison – there was always the possibility that success in Beijing could increase his earning power. Then again, in the world of professional road cycling, Olympic track medals might be worth a little, but not very much. In the meantime, the offer from Garmin was good, the security of a two-year deal appealing; but Sutton urged Wiggins not to sign – or to sign for only one year. Brailsford even showed him a fax from Sky, to prove the money would be there to set up the team.
But, to Wiggins – with his wife, Cath, and their young family also weighing heavily on his mind – requesting one year instead of the two on the table from Garmin seemed counter-intuitive. His career to date, in which he’d resolutely focused on pursuit racing for the best part of a decade, suggested he was not, by instinct, a risk-taker. Now, as he prepared to fly to Beijing, probably did not feel like the time to start gambling. He had to make a decision before the Olympics. So in Newport, in early August 2008, Wiggins agreed to spend the next two years with Garmin.
In Beijing, Brailsford and his team were lauded. They won as many gold medals – eight – as Italy won across all sports, and one more than France. Wiggins won two of the three gold medals he’d set his heart on, with the only disappointment – indeed, the entire team’s only disappointment – coming in the madison. There, a tired Wiggins, riding his third event, failed to fire, and he and Cavendish were never in the race, finally finishing ninth. Cavendish ended the meeting as the only British track cyclist not to win a medal; and he was disgusted, saying he felt ‘let down’ by Wiggins and by British Cycling. He wished he’d never pulled out of the Tour de France.
Lanesborough Hotel, London, February 2009
‘Morning, gents,’ says Dave Brailsford. There are handshakes all round. Then Brailsford sits down and six journalists form a crescent around him, settling into comfortable chairs in a drawing room on the ground floor of one of London’s plushest hotels. The Lanesborough is a striking yet understated cream-coloured building overlooking Hyde Park, with Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, engines purring, permanently stationed outside.
There is a slightly awkward silence. Brailsford, in a navy blue British Cycling Adidas tracksuit top, blue jeans and trainers, is flanked by four men wearing smart suits and ties and polished shoes. One of them introduces Brailsford as the performance director of British Cycling. But we know that. Everyone in Britain now knows that, with Brailsford elevated to the status of sporting guru, and named coach of the year at the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year awards (even though Brailsford is not, and never has been, a coach). He has been visited by Sir Alex Ferguson and his coaching staff at Manchester United; other sports are keen to speak to him, to hear his secrets. Ferguson had sat with Brailsford and Shane Sutton in the former’s office at the Velodrome, with Brailsford quizzing the great football manager on his knack of successfully re-building teams as players became old or ineffective. ‘Just get rid of the c**ts,’ Ferguson told him.
The invitation to come to the Lanesborough had come by phone only 48 hours earlier: ‘Be at the Lanesborough Hotel at 10.’ But we weren’t told why, and nor were we to tell anyone that we’d been invited to a meeting whose purpose we didn’t know.
The low winter sun cuts across the room, glancing off Brailsford’s head, forcing him to squint. ‘Well,’ he begins. ‘Thanks for coming to this … em, gathering.’ Then he spreads his hands and says: ‘We’re here to announce Britain’s new pro team, and the identity of our sponsor. Sky.’
The dam breaks; and now Brailsford quickly gets into his flow, rubbing his hands enthusiastically, forming them into descriptive shapes. ‘My world changes from today,’ he says. ‘This is new, it’s something people haven’t seen before. We’re setting out to create an epic story – an epic British success story. Now it’s down to business: to find out what it’s going to take to win the Tour de France with a clean British rider.’
What will the team be called, Brailsford is asked. He seems to hesitate. ‘It’ll be Team Sky. Yeah, Team Sky.’
And what will the budget be? The men in suits fidget. ‘Enough to be competitive,’ says one. ‘Enough to achieve our ambitions,’ says another. Brailsford smiles and shakes his head at the suggestion that they will be the Manchester City of professional cycling – the football club made newly wealthy thanks to an influx of Arab money.
‘It’s a bit like fantasy football, or fantasy cycling, at the moment,’ says Brailsford when asked how far advanced he is in assembling, from scratch, a squad of around 25 riders. ‘It’s a lot of fun. We’ve had some fantastic discussions. And we have created a monster database of the top professional cyclists.
