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British Cycling’s head coach, the Australian Shane Sutton was not so cocky. “I actually think he’s missed his chance,” he said, after first checking when the documentary would be coming out. “If he was ever going to win the Tour it was last year.”
Sutton emerged as an unforgettable supporting character in this year in the life, the sort of extreme individual you’d imagine at the heart of the astonishing rise of British Cycling. He lived in a flat above a bike shop, and, as Wiggins put it, “If I told him to come over [to my house] on Christmas Eve because I needed him here for a training session on Christmas morning, he would be here, and sleep in a sleeping bag in the garage. That’s the kind of person he is.”
As the documentary progressed, the pair formed a classic comedy double act. Sutton emerging as the perfect foil to Wiggins, doling out his own one liners while remaining hilariously unamused by the latter’s cheeky London wit. “He looks like a pizza delivery boy, doesn’t he?” said Wiggins as Sutton donned coat and crash helmet to escort Wiggins up a Mallorcan peak by motorbike. “This is the sort of s--- I have to put up with on a daily basis,” returned Sutton, stonily.
Other characters came to life in pop-up vignettes. Team GB mastermind David Brailsford gave a neat snapshot of his methods in just a few comments about how he likes his office. We also got an insight into what Wiggins feels as he tackles those Alpine ascents: “as if someone’s holding your head under water… until you can’t take any more.”
Wiggins’s life story is compelling. The son of an Australian cyclist who abandoned the family when Bradley was still a toddler, Wiggins has a deep-seated anger that has fuelled his rise to the top. Father and son were, very briefly, reconciled, but Wiggins’s frank response to questions about his father’s murder in Australia in 2008, and his decision not to attend the funeral, showed evidence of a deep, unhealed wound.
With events this compelling, superb access and an engaging subject, the behind-the-scenes story came together without the need for a voice-over.
A far harder task was to condense the drama of the Tour de France down to a few key moments, and introduce, stage right, Wiggins’s team-mate and rival Chris Froome, without dimming the lustre of either man’s achievements.
The moment in the mountains when Froome pedalled away from his team leader, dragging key rivals with him, was intercut with footage from inside the team car, with Sky’s then sporting director Sean Yates shouting at Froome over the radio: “Bradley’s hurting.” The film put its own clear spin on events, with the young pretender portrayed as snapping at the heels of the hero. “None of these guys come into cycling to be team players,” said a cycling journalist.
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