Tour de France 2012: victory is a seminal moment for Bradley Wiggins and British cycling My contribution was very small. I simply asked Brad questions, encouraged him to first identify exactly what he wanted to achieve, then break that ambition down into its component parts and finally plan how each of these elements would be achieved. It was a process that came to be known as performance planning, effectively business planning but for sport. The raw physical talent was always there, that huge racing engine, but like all youngsters, he was just lacking the ability and possibly the desire to think strategically. I was pretty brutal, and he had great courage to stick with what was not a pleasant experience but having had some success as a professional bike rider I was able to keep his attention long enough for the light bulb to go on. I got him to summarise what he had agreed to do, a sort of contract with himself so that there could be no backsliding later. It's a very hard process, because effectively it involves looking yourself in the mirror every day and being totally honest. Brad had the fortitude to take it on board and the result was gold medal in Athens when he defeated McGee. During this process Brad was surrounded by an excellent and trusted support network - Dave Brailsford, Shane Sutton and others - and they took him to more success in Beijing before he turned his full attention to road racing and the Tour de France. Brad and the team have earned all the plaudits they will receive this weekend but it would be remiss not to highlight the role of Brailsford. He has been the catalyst to everything both on the track with GB and then with the founding of Team Sky and the mission statement to win the Tour de France with a British rider in five years. Everything with Dave starts with massive passion, a dream and then a decision to take a leap of faith, to decide he was going to succeed without yet knowing exactly how. Only after that does he put the structure in place. If Dave wanted to become the best chef in the world he'd likely follow the same process: decide he is going to succeed, immerse himself in understanding what it takes, buy the best ingredients and utensils and hire all the best, most respected experts in their culinary fields. That, in a nutshell, is how Dave works. He has done it twice now and all power to him, it has been a quite remarkable period in British cycling and in their different ways he, and the Tour de France champion Bradley Wiggins, have been at the very heart of it.