I grew up in the 1940s-1950s, a world unrecognisable today. Fausto Coppi was my hero. Now, I know that those ‘soigneurs’ were probably injecting riders with all sorts of substances. Nothing has changed. When Bradley Wiggins won the Tour de France in 2012, I felt I was witnessing something I never imagined I would: an English winner of the Tour. Now of course it is all mired in suspicion. The glory has totally evaporated.
I still half believe in Brad’s innocence, but there are too many questions unanswered for more than half belief. Above all, in his autobiography, never any mention of being asthmatic. How strange, in a story about overcoming all the odds.
Apart from Brad, it is undoubtedly all in ruins: the weasel words, the fudge, but above all the use of TUEs and steroids in questionable circumstances, and now, almost unbelievably, months going by while Chris Froome’s positive dope test remains unresolved.
Marginal gains indeed, and desperately dismaying for all of us older cycling fans as we strive to come to terms with the fact that all our heroes were probably unworthy of our admiration.
But there is still one area of cycling untainted: club time-trialling. The thrill of Ray Booty becoming the first man ever to ride a 100-mile time trial in under four hours in 1956. An ordinary chap who rode down south from Nottingham to ride the Bath Road 100, stayed in a B&B, rode the event on a Bank Holiday Monday, making cycling history, then got on his bike and rode another hundred and seventy miles back to Nottingham and an ordinary job the next day. A hero worthy of the name.