As Sir Bradley Wiggins approaches his fifth Olympic Games, with a fifth gold medal of his career firmly in his sights, he is not planning to leave his second home at British Cycling even once Rio is past. “I feel I could go on to Tokyo,” he says, tongue firmly in cheek. “Though I could go on for four years, physically, it’s likely I will wind down at the end of the year. But I don’t want to set it in stone.” He is clearly contemplating continuing into 2017, with a possible mentoring role for academy riders at next year’s world track championships one putative goal.
Wiggins has already made it clear that, while Rio will mark the end of his Olympic career, it will not be the end of the road by any means. The final curtain call is being postponed time and again. “I’ve said I will ride the Tour of Britain immediately after Rio because I’ve committed to ride several six-days in the winter.” He will partner Mark Cavendish in at least one of those high-speed indoor track events, on the Olympic velodrome in London, and will ride another in the town where he was born, Ghent, fulfilling a long-standing promise to the organiser, Patrick Sercu.
The 2012 Tour winner is unlikely to leave the Manchester velodrome any time soon. “The motivation is winning gold, about this group winning gold [but] the last 12 months have been the most enjoyable of my career since I was at Garmin in 2009, riding round France having a good time, with no pressure, no expectations on me.” That too is a lifetime away, the year after Beijing when Wiggins made the breakthrough at the Tour, leading to a successful but highly pressured spell at Team Sky.
“I’m team pursuing better than 16 years ago, better than eight years ago. I’m doing two and a half lap turns at 3min 49sec pace” – a hint perhaps of the speed the GB quartet expect to reach in a few weeks – “in the past it was a single lap at 4min 0sec speed.” I’ll probably be in here in January to use the gym and I’ll keep training with the boys. I could ride the worlds with the academy lads next year. I love riding the track, I love the routine, being part of British Cycling.”
Wiggins is the only member of the Olympic squad announced last Friday whose roots go back into the era before the arrival of Lottery funding, with all its game-changing effects. “Sydney seems like yesterday,” he said, recalling being in the velodrome during the buildup to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, watching a team who largely paid their own way and rode bikes they had begged, borrowed or scrounged from local shops. “The difference is stark.”
His fellow Sydney medallist Jason Queally is still in the building, working on the technical side; few would exclude Wiggins continuing in some way as well. He has, he says, recently asked the gym supervisor at what point they will prevent him from coming in to pump weights: that seems hardly likely to happen.
The men’s team pursuit is arguably the most important medal in Rio for Great Britain, because of its prestige and history; Wiggins says the team have moved on since the London world championships, when they took a hard-fought silver medal behind Australia. “Steven Burke is back to where he was in 2012 – being left out of the final was the best thing to happen to him because he went away and worked hard. The only hiccup has been Jon Dibben’s crash but he would have been fighting with Burkie for that slot.”
Cavendish’s selection for the men’s endurance squad will not prove disruptive, Wiggins believes, partly as he feels the Manxman is not certain to be called upon. “He’s been doing efforts with us, he may have to team pursuit out there and he’s more than capable, even with balancing his training for the Tour de France. He’s back-up for if something happens, say someone gets the Zika virus.
“He has had to train with us specifically to show he can do the job but now I think we might use him in the semi-final. If he was doing purely team pursuit with a guarantee of riding every round, in my eyes he wouldn’t do the Tour, he would do everything with us day-in day-out, but for the omnium he needs to race a lot and come in with road form.” There is, he says, a chance that Cavendish would be put fourth in line, the least-pressured position.
Asked how the loss of his mentor Shane Sutton has affected British Cycling, Wiggins says wryly, “The office is quieter now.” But clearly the affection lingers, as he can still manage a more than passable impersonation of the blunt Australian. Perhaps Sutton’s job? He has, he says, been telling the GB endurance coach, Heiko Salzwedel, that he, “wants his job”, perhaps only half in jest; sources say that among the team Wiggins has taken on a lead role in the run-in to the Games. “I might do my coaching badges at the end of the year,” he adds. With virtually every career box now ticked and only enjoyment at stake, nothing should be ruled out, it seems.
