Should Sir Bradley win Roubaix (and it’s definitely not
beyond him!), he would be the first to be able to claim both Roubaix and Tour
de France wins since Bernard Hinault in 1981. He would be the first to claim
Roubaix and ANY Grand Tour since Sean Kelly won the Vuelta a Espana in 1988. He
would be the second ever to win Roubaix as a current World Time Trial Champion
after Cancellara in 2010. And, perhaps predictably, the first British rider to
win the thing. Sir Bradley is reportedly a scholar of the sport, and respects
the history. He is likely to know all of these stats.
Being a rider who has wins in both Roubaix and the Tour de
France is almost mythical these days. The 2014 winner of the Tour de France was
Vincenzo Nibali, who races at roughly 65kg. The 2013 winner was Chris Froome at
roughly 71kg. Contador was a favourite both years at 66kg. The two perennial
favourites for the cobbled Classics are Tom Boonen (82kg), and Fabian
Cancellara (81kg), although neither is racing this spring because of injury. These
are huge weight difference in cycling terms. The Tour is all about
power-to-weight (gravity comes into play in the mountains), while Roubaix needs
quantity of power to push a large gear over rough roads, and enough weight to
not be thrown off of the road by the bumps. However, the honour roll of Paris-Roubaix
has some names that also feature in the Tour de France throughout history. Once
the Pyrenees were added to the Tour de France; Sylvére Maes (1930’s), Fausto
Coppi (1940’s/1950’s), Louison Bobet (1950’s), Felice Gimondi (1960’s), Jan
Janssen (late 1960’s), Eddy Merckx (late 1960’s – 1970’s) and Bernard Hinault
(late 1970’s – 1980’s) have won both races (and only Bobet and Merckx have won
de Ronde as well). No one in the 1990’s or 2000’s has even been a favourite to
win both. Until now.
Three TdF winners - three riders weighing less than 71kg each
Image credit: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/06/06/article-2650930-1E857FAC00000578-411_634x433.jpg
So, why is “Wiggo” so well poised to win both when no one in
the recent past has? The easy answer is that he has chosen to put on weight in
order to win the World Time Trial Championships and Roubaix. More muscle mass
(when put on correctly) means more power. But it’s more than that. We, as a
society, understand that more muscle mass can mean more power. We understand
that glycogen is burnt and sweat is produced during exertion, and have taken
steps to counter these losses through nutrition and hydration. We understand
the aerodynamic drag equation and how to improve performance by reducing drag
(just look at the Hour Record attempts this year!), and live in an age where
sports science and sports engineering are genuine and financially viable
careers. And Team Sky have made all of the noises about being at the forefront
of sports science in the cycling world. Chris Froome was criticised for looking
at the SRM on his stem too much in 2013; the 2012 Sky team was accused of
creating a boring race to watch by basing their riding on vertical ascent speed
and power numbers. Recently, Sky’s classics team tried to debunk the “best way
to train for racing is by racing” myth, instead training at altitude throughout
early spring. Races are getting harder to win, as teams prepare (not the
euphemism it once was) their riders better.
The sport itself has evolved with the prevalence of sports
science. The teams couldn’t spend the money if the money wasn’t there. Some
teams (Oleg Tinkov, I’m talking about you) are funded by philanthropist
businessmen who like cycling, but others are run entirely on sponsors’ budgets
(Jean-René Bernaudeau, I’m talking about your Europcar team). If the budget is
tight, finding the money to invest in the latest technology will be like
squeezing water out of a rock. But in a lot of cases, teams can develop their
sports science to improve performance because, as a general rule, the money and interest is
there for it. Consequently, the competition is tighter, and riders have started to focus on one race a year
(Indurain probably started the trend in the 1990’s) and peak for that race, in order to qualify their sponsor's investment with success. This
creates more competition at the elite end of the sport.
As a comparison, Jean Bobet (Louison Bobet’s brother)
described racing in the 1950’s as being subject to the wishes of “The G4” of
Louison Bobet, Fausto Coppi, Ferdi Kubler and Hugo Koblet, who almost dictated
who could and couldn’t attack or win races. Rik van Steenbergen was also at the
top of the sport, but reportedly wasn’t included in the “club” of top riders.
The riders who weren’t at the top of the sport were racing for temporary
contracts and appearance fees – Andrea Carrea, a team-mate of Coppi’s, paid a
large chunk of his house off by taking fees at criteriums after one day in the
yellow jersey.
The division of earnings is now far more level in the men’s
peloton, as riders prepare for different races. I mention this because at that
stage of cycling, the races were likely to be won by one of the G4 or van
Steenbergen. These days, well over a dozen different names are genuine
contenders for the genuinely big races (Contador, Froome, Nibali, Quintana;
Valverde, Gerrans, Kwiatkowski, Dan Martin, Gilbert; Boonen, Cancellara, Sagan,
Terpstra, Stybar, Thomas, Wiggins; Cavendish, Kittel, Degenkolb, Greipel,
Kristoff, etc). Bernard Hinault’s criticism of the top GC riders not targeting
Classics a few years ago was a bit unfair in my opinion, due to the expansion
and specificity of the targets in the sport these days. Back in the 20th
century, riders could target multiple different styles of racing but these
days, there is too much investment (and subsequently, risk of being
under-prepared for other races), and the technology being available to more
riders has created a more level playing field (to some extent).
So, should Wiggins win Roubaix (or Flanders) in the mud and
rain – or dust – and cobbles, less than three years after riding to glory
through summer sunshine in the Alps; it would be a phenomenal achievement, due
to the number of different rider physiologies in the sport, and quantity of contenders
that he will have beaten across both races. He claimed that he wanted to be
remembered as a legend of the sport, and should he end his career with World
and Olympic Time Trial titles, track World and Olympic gold, several short
stage races, a Tour de France, AND a cobbled Classic (not to mention maybe the
Hour Record), I believe that there is no rider with a wider and more impressive
palmarés in the past 30 years, due to
the diversity of his wins.
At that point, in terms of wins and character, he can
reasonably be compared to Miguel Indurain, Louison Bobet, or even Bernard
Hinault and Fausto Coppi. As a legend of the sport.
