Musings on Wiggins Tour win by Graham Thompson
Not in my Life time….
did I expect to see ‘us’ winning the Tour de France. When the formation of the Sky team was announced David Brailsford said the target was to win the Tour within five years and I thought he must be mad! I have proved to be the mad man as it has taken him only three years to realise this ambition.
I have been cycling since 1948 and when I started we only had Reg Harris as a world champion at any sport who figured in the public’s consciousness. We only had one world champion and he was a cyclist and so it continued for most of my lifetime to the general public so far as cycling was concerned. Although cyclists, and I am talking about the enthusiastic club cyclists, knew differently that we had produced world champions and courageous riders but to win the Tour de France was a different matter. For example how many people out there know that Beryl Burton won seven world championships? Recent years have seen riders such as Boardman and Obree start to bring cycling to the notice of the great British public and then success in the Olympics at Athens followed by real dominance at Beijing with Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Bradley Wiggins, Nicole Cooke and others.
Now ‘we’ have done it! Bradley Wiggins in yellow in 2012 as winner of the 99th Tour with Chris Froome in second place and Mark Cavendish taking his fourth victory in the sprint on the final stage on the Champs-Elysees. The result was the lead story on TV news and national newspapers and for this cyclist it all seems unbelievable. I find it hard to take in but it must be true as I have seen the pictures and read the words!
When Tommy Simpson won the world road race championship in 1965 I can remember how proud I felt cycling through Leicester on my way to a club event, and now I have just come back from a short ride from Stevenage to Weston and back and I tried a little harder in salute to our heroes in France. Three little known sports – cycling, sailing and rowing – have brought unprecedented success to this country over the past two decades, and I am proud to call myself a cyclist as a participant in one of them.
When I started cycling all those years ago people thought that you rode a bike because you could not afford a car. What a misconception! Now cycling has come full circle and it is regarded as a healthy sport and beneficial to the wellbeing of the nation. In some wealthy city quarters it is regarded as the new golf with small fortunes being spent on equipment and clothing plus time expended on charity rides and the like.
Just in case you cannot believe that we have a Tour de France winner and for one more memorable time: Bradley Wiggins, Team Sky. Fantastic - amazing - unprecedented – and absolutely fabulous. Still can’t really believe it though!
Graham Thompson