Bradley Wiggins has been writing about Lance Armstrong and his place in the history of the Tour de France.
Lance Armstrong was a Tour de France champion able to cope with anything that came his way and the perfect winner that the race’s founders had in mind, Bradley Wiggins has said.
The British 2012 Tour de France winner has said recently that having stepped away from racing for some years now, he saw the human side of Armstrong’s downfall and disgrace.
When Armstrong came back to racing and claimed 3rd in the 2009 Tour de France he kept Wiggins off the podium, as the Briton finished 4th.
And after Armstrong’s doping had been exposed and he spoke about it in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Wiggins described the American as “a lying bastard”.
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But in recent weeks Bradley Wiggins said he was being controlled by Team Sky’s public relations machine at the time.
He explained he couldn’t say what he wanted at the time; to the extent he lost the ability to use his brain.
And now he saw the more human side to the controversy around Armstrong, though he didn’t condone his doping.
In similar comments now, Wiggins goes further. Writing in his soon to be published book Icons, Wiggins writes about Armstrong.
He says the Texan was the kind of winner the Tour de France founders had in mind when they began the race over a century ago.
Lance Armstrong, Wiggins writes, was “the archetypal Tour de France cyclist and he was precisely the sort of winner Henri Desgrange had in mind 120 years ago”.
The Icons book is a tribute to 21 cycling stars, Lance Armstrong among them. Wiggins tells readers to “look away now if you’re easily offended” before describing the impact Armstrong had on him when he was 13 years old growing up in London.
He was a “meaty-looking American” who “looked an absolute beast on the bike”, says Wiggins, before going on to describe their first encounter.
“It was during a bike race and he came up and rode alongside me. He said, ‘How you doin’ there, Wiggo?’ or words to that effect, and smiled at me,” he writes.
“I felt 10ft tall because . . . well, because he was Lance Armstrong. Am I allowed to say that, or does it make me some sort of cycling heretic?”
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He says of winning the Tour himself: “I feel privileged to be a member of this group of nutters; we are not what you might call ‘normal’ people, but ‘normal’ certainly doesn’t win you the Tour.
“Legend has it that Henri Desgrange, the father of the Tour, envisaged a ‘perfect winner’.
“The ideal Tour de France would have one finisher, a type of super-athlete who would not only defeat his opponents but also whatever nature might throw at him.”
And he said that, for him, Lance Armstrong – now stripped of his seven Tour wins – was one such rider.
Some of the Tour de France winners down the years were “on occasion, borderline sociopathic”.
“(The Tour de France winner) is always a very special, very driven human being,” Bradley Wiggins adds when writing about Armstrong.
“Therein lies the paradox of Lance’s having being stripped. His opponents didn’t necessarily like him, but . . . sure as hell respected him.”
And he also comments generally about the impact of becoming famous for his exploits on the bike.
“There was a time when I thought being famous was great but . . . it’s abundantly clear that neither Cath nor I are particularly cut out for it.”
The last year or so had been particularly hard, he added. Wiggins has faced allegations of cheating in recent years.
A parliamentary committee in the UK accused Team Sky of crossing an ethical line in how it used therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs).
These are effectively doctors’ notes that allow medicines normally banned to be used for the treatment of ailments.
Two years ago the TUE details of a number of world class athletes were publicly leaked after the Russian Fancy Bears hacking team obtained them when it hacked WADA.
Wiggins was one of those riders whose details were leaked. They showed he had availed of TUES for the corticosteroid triamcinolone.
He did so before the Tour de France in 2011, which he crashed out of, and in 2012 when he won.
Wiggins also availed of a third TUE before the Giro d’Italia the following year. He has said that the TUEs were to treat respiratory problems linked to hay fever.
Wiggins broke no rules and the TUEs were properly applied for and sanctioned by medics and the UCI.
However, other riders questioned the ethics of availing of the TUEs amid claims they would have reduced his weight been beneficial to his power.
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