Giro 2013: Is Wiggins the same force he was last year?

28Apr 2013

Betfair

Having tipped Ryder Hesjedal at 60.0 to win last year's Giro, we asked Jack Houghton to assess the chances of Sir Bradley Wiggins as he targets this year's race.

Prior to the 2012 Tour De France, I recommended a large bet on Bradley Wiggins at 2.68 saying, "All the scenarios where Wiggins doesn't win seem to revolve around him making a mistake, getting injured, or somehow performing below the level that we know he is capable of." Half-way through that Tour, Wiggins was a 1.40-shot, who only needed to stay out of trouble to become the first British winner of the Yellow Jersey.

With that in mind, it's a little surprising that Wiggins is as big as 2.24 to win the 2013 Giro D'Italia, especially in a field that contains only a few riders with genuine Grand Tour credentials. Beyond Nibali, Hesjedal, Basso, Gesink and Sanchez, it's hard to make a case for any rider challenging for the Maglia Rosa, which makes the race much less competitive than that faced by Wiggins in last year's Tour.

Furthermore, when the route was announced in September 2012, it was as if the organisers had planned it with Wiggins in mind. Sure, it contains a torturous last mountainous week, but is relatively flat up to that point, with a long individual time-trial and 17.4km team time-trial an opportunity for Wiggins to build up a healthy lead to take into the big climbs.

With that in mind, then, isn't this Giro Wiggins' to lose, just like last year's Tour was? On that basis, shouldn't he be a long odds-on chance for Giro glory?

Well, maybe, but the big difference this time around is that Wiggins has not looked the indomitable force on the roads that he was when dominating his warm-up races before the 2012 Tour. So whilst Wiggins might be bullish, claiming that, "In training last week late March in Tenerife, on the climbs, I was ahead of any point last year before the Tour," punters are reluctant to get stuck in to his seemingly generous Giro odds until they have seen this training form in evidence in real competition.

Race results in 2013 for Wiggins have been inauspicious: he finished nowhere in Challenge Majorca; down the field in the Tour of Oman; fifth in the Tour of Catalonia; and fifth in the Giro Del Trentino. That last outing was not without hope for Wiggins' supporters, though: he was in contention on the final day and looked to be comfortable on the final climb before a technical issue saw him lose contact with the lead group. He rode aggressively to rejoin the main contenders, only to look spent as Nibali launched an attack off the front to take 1m 40secs out of Wiggins on the day.

Layers of Wiggins will say that his reaction to his broken bike on that final stage - he dismounted and propelled the offending machine into a wall - is evidence of a rider and team struggling to regain the feeling of invincibility they experienced before last year's Tour.

Backers of Wiggins will point out that, when the individual and team time-trial is done at the Giro, Nibali may well be faced with a three-minute deficit to make up in the mountains, and, technical issues aside, he showed no sign of being able to put that kind of time into Wiggins during the Trentino. What's more, if Team Sky showed anything last year, it's that they are able to learn from calamity and improve. There's little chance that the same mistakes will be made in the Giro.

Wiggins' lustre of invincibility might be a little tainted, but at 2.24, I'm with the backers, if only because his odds will likely shorten dramatically in the opening week.