Mountains over, Wiggins Senses Tour Victory
Ain't no mountain high enough to keep Bradley Wiggins from winning the Tour de France.
The three-time Olympic champion — known more for speed than scaling ascents — closed in on Tour victory by finishing close behind Stage 17 winner Alejandro Valverde on Thursday in the race's Pyrenees finale.
As Wiggins cleared the stage's last big climb with his top rivals in his wake, his mind drifted as he sensed his quest to be Britain's first winner of cycling's show race was now very close.
The only real blip came in the seemingly condescending hand-waving from second-placed Christopher Froome, his own teammate, to prod Wiggins to go faster to chase Valverde — to no avail.
"We rode away from the rest of the field and I just totally lost concentration, everything," said Wiggins. "I was thinking of lots of things at that time ... the fight had gone from me at that point."
It signaled a rare — if permissible now, with three racing days left — lapse from the single-minded ambition of his Sky team. He looks all but certain to win the Tour with a time-trial — his specialty — on tap Saturday.
For bookmakers and seasoned Tour fans, Wiggins has always been the pre-race favorite. The questions were whether he would keep his head in the face of a media spotlight and pressures, and hold up in the mountains.
Wiggins and his Sky cohorts answered that emphatically: He did.
It's clear now that if he loses, it won't be because of the mountains that were once seen as his weak point.
The 143.5-kilometer ride from the southwestern town of Bagneres-de-Luchon to the ski station of Peyragudes featured three hefty ascents in the Pyrenees and an uphill finish.
On the last ascent, Froome, a Kenyan-born Briton, powered ahead with Wiggins struggling to keep on his wheel. But Vincenzo Nibali of Italy, the only real threat to Wiggins' title hopes, was trailing behind.
"Once we saw Nibali had cracked on the top of Peyresourde, we knew we weren't going to have the danger of him attacking in the final," said Wiggins. "At that point I knew it was pretty much over."
Valverde, the Movistar leader who is back from a two-year doping ban this year, won his third Tour stage in the breakaway. Froome was second and Wiggins was third, both 19 seconds back.
Overall, Wiggins leads Froome in second by 2 minutes, 5 seconds, and Nibali trails third, 2:41 back, after losing 18 seconds to them in the final ascent.
Flat stages await Friday and in Sunday's ride to the finish on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, and aren't expected to alter the standings. Wiggins won the first time trial in Stage 9, and could win Saturday's.
A 2-minute lead after nearly 80 hours of racing and two-and-a-half weeks might not seem like much of a margin. But in stage races like the Tour, the strategy of success for a leader is keying on his closest rivals.
Wiggins wasn't much worried about any other riders. After Nibali and Froome, his next closest challenger was Jurgen Van Den Broeck, who was 5:46 back, a deficit almost impossible to erase without a collapse by Wiggins.
Defending champion Cadel Evans of Australia, after falling out of contention in the first Pyrenean day Wednesday, lost more time and trailed by 9:57. Still, he rose to sixth overall, after Spain's Haimar Zubeldia lost nearly a minute to the Australian.
American Tejay Van Garderen - a BMC teammate of Evans - rose a notch, too, to fifth, and was 8:30 back.
Valverde, with tears in his eyes in the winner's circle, had a rough start to the Tour with at least three crashes. He also sensed Wiggins and Froome closing on him at the end of the stage.
"I went all out," said Valverde, who also won stages in the Tour Down Under and the Paris-Nice races this year. "When I saw there were only 700 meters left, I was really really happy".
Of his victory he said, "It erases all of the past."
From the outset, Sky has taken a methodical approach to winning the Tour. Since 2009, it set a goal of victory within five years. Wiggins has been rhythmic, not aggressive or attacking: When the best climbers were up out of their saddle pedaling in "danseuse" - dancer - position, he stayed seated, riding along behind a Sky escort or at times, leading himself.
The attacks against Wiggins in the climbs were relatively few. The biggest came from Nibali, to a lesser extent by Van Den Broeck, and less so by defending champ Evans.
Wiggins appears on pace to make some history: He'd become the first Olympic track champion to become a Tour winner. He took the yellow in Stage 7, and hasn't let go of it since: No rider has done that since France's Bernard Hinault held a lead from the same stage in 1981 all the way to the finish.
And only two riders have worn yellow this year: Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland had it after winning the prologue. Not since 1977 has there been only one change of the yellow jersey.
The top three - Wiggins, Froome, Nibali - haven't changed since Stage 11.
Friday's 18th stage takes riders 222.5 kilometers from Blagnac to Brive-la-Gaillarde in central France.
Source: Associated Press
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