this type of thing can happen. It’s the Giro. You can have good days and bad days, and you have to wait until the end to tot them all up and see where you are. It’s a setback, but Brad’s still very much in the hunt. We’ve now got to take each day as it comes, focus on fully recovering tonight and hitting the time trial hard tomorrow. We’ll see where we are tomorrow night, and take stock of the situation then.’
The pivotal day dawned. Could Wiggins do his stuff and claim the maglia rosa? Waiting for each rider, rolling down the start ramp at two-minute intervals, was a 54.8km course that challenged technical skill as much as stamina and judgement of pace. The fan-lined ramp up to the finish at Saltara was a sting in the tail, giving spectators a close-up view of the agony etched on each rider’s face as they eked out their last watt of power towards the line. As Wiggins noted, ‘It’s one of those tests where you have to be good from start to finish. If you die off at the end, you’re going to lose three minutes on the final climb.’
Team Sky approached the potential Sir Bradley Wiggins masterclass with customary forensic scrutiny. Wiggins had ridden the route, studied videos and absorbed the opinions of his support team. The plan was to get up early, ride the first 30km again, drive the final 25km, then get on the turbo bike, plug in the pump-up music and let the adrenalin take over.
Under cloudy skies and sporadic sunshine, Alex Dowsett – a former Team Sky rider and Giro débutant – set a time early on that was proving unmatchable for rider after ever more highly placed rider. As Wiggins sped off the starting gantry, alone in a private world of pain and focus, his junior compatriot’s time of 1 hour, 16 minutes and 27 seconds was still the time to beat. Wiggins was the Olympic road time trial champion, an undisputed expert at getting from A to B with superb aerodynamic efficiency, but it was nerve-wracking watching his progress over the tight, technical course. The winding narrow country lanes made it difficult to get into a rhythm. The previous day had not been an ideal lead-in, but surely here he could reverse the momentum of the last week for himself?
Eighteen minutes in – yet more wretched luck. Wiggins was indicating ‘puncture’ with a frantic gesture to the team car shadowing him. He was off his new Pinarello Bolide time trial bike, chucking it into the hedge, and back on his old Graal model, trying to stay in the zone, striving to re-establish his rhythm. It was another blow. The loss of precious seconds left him ‘a bit ruffled’. At the first intermediate split, he was 52 seconds down, only seventh fastest.
‘We did a swift bike swap but he lost advantage there and broke his rhythm,’ said Dan Hunt, who was in radio contact with him from the car behind. ‘I started to get this feeling . . . There are problems everywhere we turn.’
Digging in deep, Wiggins made up time in the latter part of the course and finished second, 10 seconds down on Dowsett. It was a result that left him not in the pink jersey – and not with a sizeable cushion of a lead to defend in the mountains – but in fourth place overall, 1 minute and 16 seconds down on Nibali, and behind Cadel Evans and the Dutchman Robert Gesink. ‘It’s all to play for, still,’ he said phlegmatically. ‘There was initial disappointment because I wanted to win the stage. But it is what it is. It’s going to be a hell of a race for the next two weeks.’
It was another thrilling day of unpredictable action and unsung heroes – and yet more skid-pan corners, as leaden skies dropped relentless waves of heavy rain. While Maxim Belkov of Russia broke clear of a breakaway on the penultimate climb, the Vallombrosa, soloing his way to a 44-second clear victory, the peloton was hyperactive with all sorts of attacks and probing moves. ‘It wasn’t super pleasant out there,’ said Danny Pate. ‘It was fast from the start. A couple of different groups formed and then finally we got the breakaway. It was quite big, and having one guy in there – Juan Manuel Garate, who was only 5 minutes down in the GC – the peloton never let it go out very far.
‘The two big climbs in the middle were hard, too. When it was time to bridge the gap we stayed together. Any time you have to do a chase, one of the key things is not to panic. We tried to bring our group back to the main group and we managed it right on the Category-3 climb. We had Rigo and Sergio ahead, and everyone else was behind helping Brad. After he got back on, that was it – I was pretty much blown!’
All eyes were on Wiggins, who had dropped back on the long series of bends off the same mountain Belkov used as his launch pad to victory. Although his team-mates escorted him at pace for 20km to regain contact with the maglia rosa group, questions were arising about whether the British knight had lost his ‘descending mojo’. The toil required to rejoin the group demanded an enormous effort from Wiggins, too. Although he had his Team Sky colleagues to help, he did much of the work himself, leaving himself empty as he struggled to hold on during the day’s final two climbs, shorter and punchier than those that had preceded them, and looked in peril again on the descent from Fiesole.
‘I was riding right behind him,’ said Giovanni Visconti. ‘I could see he was handling the descents very badly. I think when it comes to descents he’s now got some kind of mental block.’ You could dismiss that as a bit of psychological warfare from another team, but Christian Knees made a similar observation: ‘Bradley was a little bit nervous downhill. Bad luck with the weather meant the roads were very slippery. He still had confidence in his climbing skills and his ability. He kept fighting. He was the same Bradley, mentally thinking all the time about how to win, but he was a little bit cautious.’ Two days later, Wiggins, never one to make excuses, reflected on his performance and said: ‘Let’s be honest. I descended like a bit of a girl after the crash . . . Not to disrespect girls, I have one at home. But that’s life and we have to push on and deal with the disappointments.’
‘Everyone thinks uphill is the big challenge, but downhill can play a big part,’ said Pate. ‘Uphill, you need a good power-to-weight ratio. Downhill, you need to be a bit crazy. Some descents are over 100 km/h. They’re fun, exhilarating, scary, frightening . . . how you take them all depends on who you are. Some guys have way more confidence than skill and ability. Some guys are out of their minds. People think the sprinters are crazy. Some of the downhill guys are crazy, too. Personally, I’m okay downhill, but if I crash it definitely takes me back a notch. It takes me a while to regain confidence. You can get really shaken up – but some guys don’t get shaken up; a crash doesn’t affect them.
‘The Giro is an annual race, but every edition has different stages, routes, climbs and descents,’ he continues. ‘Some descents are fast, some are more technical, with tight turns. It’s
