Wiggins, the pursuit of perfection

July 31, 2012

Crédit Photo : Presse Sports
32-year-old Bradley Wiggins recently became the first British Tour de France champion at the end of a race marked with the colours of Team Sky, which also propelled Christopher Froome to second place. The yellow jersey of the 2012 Tour and winner of the Besançon and Chartres time trials managed to transcend his image as a pursuit cyclist limited to the race against the clock and metamorphosed into a strong leader on all terrains.

Another caterpillar emerges from its cocoon as a butterfly! Pushing the pedals in a velodrome is probably not where you would have expected to find a young boy in the afternoon in early 1990s England. But Bradley Wiggins' love affair with track cycling started at the age of 12 thanks to his father Gary's long career as a six-day racer. He did not learn much from his absent father, but the genes he inherited from him are partly responsible for his great talent. In fact, his precocity and the determination with which he pursued his ambition to become a pro cyclist are the signs a one-of-a-kind personality. Surrounded by books, pictures and results of all sorts of races from a very early age, Bradley's teenage years revolved around cycling to an extent only matched by his tenacity in practising the sport.

A fixated Bradley first focused on the track in pursuit of his Olympic dreams, seizing his chance by crossing the Channel to sign his first professional contract with FDJ. His first experience at the Olympics ended on a sour note after a fall in the penultimate lap of the Madison cost him a second medal in Sydney to go with the bronze medal won in the team pursuit. His frustration only served to stoke his fire and push him towards finding a way of achieving his goals. In the run-up to the 2004 Olympics he even decided to leave his comfortable place at FDJ in order to leave some breathing space between him and Bradley McGee, his arch-rival in the 4 km pursuit race. As the pundits predicted, it all came down to a duel in the Athens velodrome, where Wiggins prevailed to claim the gold medal. His preparation for Beijing went even more smoothly and the Briton with the big engine ruled the pursuit race with an iron fist, taking gold in both the team and the individual efforts.

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