In his first column of the season the Olympic gold medallist Bradley Wiggins reveals how he cannot wait to start racing
I'm writing this in Mallorca, putting in a final spell of training before my season starts next week in the Tour of the Algarve. Everywhere I keep seeing other professional cyclists out training. There is a race going on here, my peers are competing and I'm starting to think 'God, the season has started already'.
As a cyclist, when you finish racing in early autumn you always think the winter is going to be long. You have so much time ahead of you. But all that time my thoughts have been on constantly working, training, progressing, seeing improvements in the numbers. So what it feels like right now is like when you go into an operating theatre, and have anaesthetic, then you wake up and time has moved on. It seems like no time since Mark Cavendish was winning the world's and suddenly it's only five months until the Tour de France.
I think I'm in a good position, with the self-belief I've got after the season I had last year, the work I've done and the confidence I now have as a rider. In cycling terms it's not long until the Tour and the most important part of the preparation is over: I've done the hard work, stayed healthy. It's just a matter of taking my training head off and racing now.
There will be extra excitement about that first race. When you've been working hard, you want to see where you are. All the evidence suggests I'm way ahead of last year in my fitness ? the numbers I'm producing, the work I've been doing, the tests I've had ? and you start to think 'I was third in the Paris-Nice with what I had last year and now I'm ahead'. You can't help wondering what you can do.
One thing which is clear cut at last is that the season will go ahead without Alberto Contador. Only he knows whether he was innocent or guilty, but the decision has been made and I think it was the right decision for the sport. If the whole affair had been drawn out any more it would have made a mockery of the system.
As for the chance of eating contaminated supplements or meat, that's something we live with every day. It's why we constantly check any supplements and why we employ a chef to source all the products we eat. He wouldn't be the first to fall foul of a supplement: Martin Gleeson, the rugby league player and the Belgian cyclist Iljo Keisse are other names that come to mind.
He won't leave a massive void at the Tour in terms of the racing, because last year he was almost unnoticed until the L'Alpe d'Huez stage where he attacked early on. It was only then that we saw shades of his old self. Other people emerged ? Tom Danielson, Tommy Voeckler, Pierre Rolland for example ? and it will be the same this year.
One thing that struck me last year was that Contador seemed quite dignified about doing his job considering what was going on. He just got on with things very quietly, like Alejandro Valverde did before he was banned. You would see Valverde ripping up a race and winning, and Contador was the same in spite of everything that has been hanging over him for the last year. He's clearly a strong character inside.
As for where his absence leaves me, when I saw he was banned I was a bit disappointed that he wasn't going to be at the Tour, because I want all the best guys to be there so that I can try to beat them. There's an element of 'I'd like to have had a go at him'. As it is, it's one rider less and one team less to think about.
Next week while I'm in Portugal my Great Britain team-mates will be riding the London World Cup. My thoughts will be with them: I know how important it is for them. It's the first marker on their road to London 2012, a key landmark, and I know they've been preparing for it as if it were a world championship. There's an element of wishing I could be there but you can't do everything. I'm preparing for a marathon this year so I can't be doing the cycling equivalent of a 100m sprint.
A lot of athletes and other people will have been counting down to 2012 but it doesn't feel that different. In fact it feels easier this year than last, when I was coming off a terrible 2010. This year I've got everything to look forward to. I'm going all out to try to win the Tour and that's bloody brilliant. It's what I dreamed of as a kid when I was sitting on my turbo trainer watching videos of Miguel Indurain climbing in the Tour. Bring it on.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/feb/13/bradley-wiggins-tour-de-france
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