Jonathan Vaughters first realised that Bradley Wiggins could challenge for the Tour de France five years ago. “In the 2005 Tour de l’Avenir, there was a tough mountain stage and he won it,” Vaughters, the Briton’s former team manager, said. “So as soon as I could, I signed him.”

Last July, Wiggins, riding for the American’s Garmin team, unexpectedly crossed the line fourth overall in Paris. It was a performance that, with intense competition among teams for Tour invitations, multiplied his market value. But along came David Brailsford and Team Sky and that, for Garmin, was the end of that.

Vaughters was deeply disappointed by the Londoner’s decision to leave Garmin for Team Sky. “It’s sad that my faith in him during the first year didn’t mean enough to him for him to stick it out,” he said. “But then I don’t know what his motivations are.”

When it came to compensation, Brailsford and Sky are said to have been taken aback by Garmin’s assessment of Wiggins’s worth. “If losing a key athlete cost us our place in the Tour, and because we weren’t in the Tour we lost the title sponsor, what’s that worth?” Vaughters said. “Twenty million? Thirty million? It’s a domino effect. Losing Wiggins could have taken down the house.

“If I was cantankerous this could have been a year and a half off Brad’s career, because he was in court. That would have been the worst-case scenario, but it was possible.” Most assessments are that Team Sky paid around £4 million to placate Garmin.

The relationship between Wiggins and Vaughters soon broke down. “We talked in August and he’d made it clear what was in his head,” Vaughters said. “But we didn’t speak again until Christmas. He was upset at some of the reaction. I said: ‘I’m upset that you didn’t want to stick it out with me.’

“I think he thought, ‘what’s the big deal, Jonathan?’ But as much as I like Brad, my first responsibility was to the sponsor and the team.”

Despite the rift, Vaughters remains a fan of Wiggins. “He’s a unique personality,” he said. “I don’t hold any malice for him.”

Vaughters thinks Wiggins has further potential, even if it may not be realised in 2010. “The 2009 Tour route was suited to Brad, but 2010 is less so,” he said. “In 2009, the tactics worked in his favour and Astana were soft-pedalling a bit to not embarrass Lance [Armstrong]. And Brad is very good at a flat stage that has a big hill at the finish and we saw a lot of that in 2009.”

And will the sometimes prickly Wiggins, whose Twitter page is renowned for sledging his rivals and the media, handle the weight of expectation? “He doesn’t deal well with criticism, so we felt the best approach was to pull him out of the limelight as much as possible,” Vaughters said.

“But there is no bigger pressure than the Olympics [Wiggins won gold in the pursuit at Beijing] and Brad seemed to deal pretty well with that.”