Cycling fans have long been inured to being let down by their heroes. Even still, there has been a special pang of say-it-ain’t-so-Joe disappointment with the announcement from Bradley Wiggins that, starting next month, he will be going head-to-head with Towie’s Lydia Bright and Spencer Matthews from Made in Chelsea to see who’s better at giant slalom. At stake, the prestigious Cowbell Trophy.
“Skiing is a big passion of mine,” said Wiggins, revealing that he would be one of 14 competitors on Channel 4’s reality show The Jump. “It was a mix of that and the other committed names this year that made me want to sign up. Major retiring Olympians such as Sir Steve Redgrave have also trod this path. I see this as a sporting challenge and want to go out there and win it. Just don’t call me a celebrity.”
I was a bit taken aback by Wiggins’ decision; not because I thought he was bigger or better than that – who doesn’t love some superficial, nonsense entertainment? No judgement here – but because he’d been so outspoken about such shows in the past. I interviewed Wiggins in May 2015, as he launched the new road-and-track squad Team Wiggins, and he was hilariously dismissive.
“It’s people saying, ‘How do you want to be remembered when you retire?’” he said. “I never wanted to be a team captain on A Question of Sport and just some bloke who could tell funny jokes and be a bit stupid. Have people in the future say, ‘Oh, he won the Tour de France’ or whatever. I always thought I wanted to be a lot deeper than that. I don’t want to end up making documentaries for ITV4 jumping off a cliff. I don’t see that as a legacy. That’s just becoming a celebrity.”
Well, The Jump’s not on ITV4, and he won’t be throwing himself off a cliff, more a modest hillock, but you can understand the confusion.
So Wiggins is a hypocrite, right? Not necessarily. I think we all understand – and probably broadly agree with – the point he’s making about our celebrity-obsessed age. Wiggins has always taken his idols from the world of music, more than sport, and he’s especially enamoured with mod-punk. This era, of the late 1970s and early 80s, was just about the last time when the expression selling out carried any pejorative weight, as bands refused on principle to sign with major labels and turned down lucrative offers from advertisers to use their tracks.
With his arcane facial hair and moody photo shoots, Wiggins sometimes acts like he’s in a punk band, but the rest of the world has moved on. John Lydon from the Sex Pistols has flogged Country Life butter and Iggy Pop has encouraged us to take out car insurance. When it came out that the Killers and Paul McCartney played a private gig on New Year’s Eve for Roman Abramovich on the island of St Barts, no one asked: “How could they do that?” Only, “How much do you think they got for it?”
The question is then: why is Wiggins doing The Jump? He’s suggested that, in his early dotage, it is the element of competition that appeals to him. And certainly there’s proper athletic pedigree in the line-up, some even at their peak: ass-kicking Jade Jones, pommel powerhouse Louis Smith and Kadeena Cox, the Paralympian who won four golds in Rio, who has been told that she will sacrifice her UK Sport funding while taking part in the show. There are some bona fide legends too: Jason Robinson, Gareth Thomas and, at a stretch, Robbie Fowler.
Wiggins’s contention, though, that this is a hard-forged test of athletic mettle does have some chinks. Previous winners of The Jump include Joey Essex and Joe McElderry, an X Factor alumnus; the fate of Olympic legends has typically been early elimination due to injury, as we’ve seen with Redgrave, Rebecca Adlington, Linford Christie and Beth Tweddle.
The underlying reason for Wiggins’s involvement, then, is much more likely to be reputational. Back in September, the Fancy Bears hackers leaked his repeated use of hardcore asthma medication between 2011 and 2013 – sanctioned by the controversial therapeutic use exemptions and taken, Wiggins insists, to counter his allergy to pollen. The UK Anti-Doping inquiry into the case is still ongoing and we are still no wiser about what was in the mystery package delivered to Team Sky at the end of the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné. Until that is cleared up, he “will always have a question mark hanging over him”, in Sir Chris Hoy’s words. Smith, who appeared to mock Islam in a video last year, finds himself in a similar PR quagmire.
Presumably, Wiggins, judging from previous comments, wouldn’t have chosen to appear on The Jump, but the show – which, let’s face it, has now become unmissable TV – could prove a welcome distraction from more serious concerns and a prime-time reminder of what a brilliant deadpan wit he can be, when he’s in the mood.
The situation Wiggins has found himself in reminds me of an exchange I had with Rob Brydon last year. He had written and appeared in so many brilliant shows that I wondered why he agreed to do those awful ads for P&O Cruises? “I’ve been accused of selling out for doing adverts,” Brydon shot back. “From what? What do you think I am? I’m the little bloke from Wales who tries to make you laugh.”
Just as we should never really be surprised when sports people disappoint us as role models, we shouldn’t ride them too hard to maintain impeccable legacies. Whatever his reasons for taking on Caprice at winter sports – self-worth, school fees, crisis management – if Wiggins feels he wants to add the Cowbell Trophy to his gold medals and yellow jerseys, then we should only urge him, entirely metaphorically, to break a leg.
