How was it for you?
2012 was the year many suspected would change the landscape of cycling in this nation forever. In January, we predicted that 2012 would be British cycling’s greatest year, and tested our theory on a number of key players in cycle sport and the bike industry.
Former British road race champion, Russell Downing, finding his calendar again filled with domestic racing after ending a two-year tenure with Team Sky out of contract, told us he would be targeting victories in 2012.
The Yorkshireman delivered, winning seven races, home and abroad, and re-establishing himself as one of the nation’s best riders after a relatively quiet 2011 with Team Sky as a domestique.
Another former national road race champion, Malcolm Elliott, general manager of Node4-Giordana, told us he would not race in 2012, ending a successful second chapter to an impressive career. Elliott had focussed his sights instead on rebuilding his team from the ashes of the highly successful Motorpoint squad. Node4-Giordana’s greatest success would come in the Tour of Britain, where Pete Williams won the Yodel sprints classification.
The London Bike Show was the first significant event on the calendar, and the four-day show drew thousands of cycle fans to London’s Excel Centre, where the unveiling of the Endura Racing squad (of whom we would hear plenty more throughout the year) the first appearance on British soil of Wilier’s exotic Twin Foil time trial bike, and Pinarello’s display of replicas of the machines to be ridden by Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins, were among the highlights.
Speaking of Cavendish and Wiggins (and we had cause to do so often this year), we checked in with Britain’s world road race champion and Tour de France champion-in-waiting at an exclusive London hotel to discuss what both men had on their ‘to do’ lists this year. While Cavendish would miss his stated target of a second victory at Milan-San Remo (and later those of a second Tour de France green jersey and Olympic gold medal) it’s worth remembering that the Manx Missile’s “lean” year included six Grand Tour stage wins, including a record-equaling fourth victory on the Champs Elysees. Wiggins, on the other hand, was low key, insisting that he hadn’t looked in detail at the Tour stages.
We also looked in on Raleigh-GAC, and caught up with directeur sportif, Eddie White, who compared the opportunity to work with the team, one that had dominated cycling’s top tier in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to being offered a job with Manchester United. The Nottingham-based outfit achieved a degree of success in 2012, including a second year in the white jersey of national circuit race champion for Graham Briggs, who also won the Colchester round of the Halfords Tour Series.
The WorldTour calendar kicked off 12,000 miles away in Australia with the Tour Down Under. An exciting race, it set the stall for two riders who will look back fondly on 2012. Australian, Simon Gerrans, opened the account of Orica-GreenEDGE in the best possible with overall victory on home soil in the team’s debut race. Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) marked his return from a two-year ban with victory over Gerrans by the narrowest of margins at the top of Old Willunga Hill. Both men went on to record further significant victories. Gerrans scored the biggest win of his career with victory at Milan-San Remo in March, while Valverde claimed a place on the final podium at Paris-Nice, stage 17 of the Tour de France (while Chris Froome played super domestique to Wiggins), and two stages of the Vuelta a Espana en route to second overall.
The sense of anticipation from those we spoke to in January was palpable. Clearly we weren’t the only ones expecting something special from a year in which a British team would field the strongest line up in the Tour de France and the nation would host the biggest event in sport.
