Sir Bradley Wiggins has announced his retirement from cycling, calling time on a 16-year career as a professional in which he won the Tour de France and a record eight Olympic medals. In a statement posted on his Instagram account the 2012 Tour winner said he had “been lucky enough to live a dream and fulfil my childhood aspiration of making a living and career out of the sport I fell in love with at the age of 12”. He added: “What will stick with me forever is the support and love from the public through thick and thin, all as a result of riding a pushbike for a living.”

Wiggins posted his message alongside a photograph of many of the prizes bestowed on him; a career snapshot including five gold, one silver and two bronze Olympic medals as well as many of the jerseys he was zipped into on assorted podiums after successful tilts at stage races such as the Tour de France. As accomplished against the clock as he was in the peloton, the 36-year-old from Kilburn’s palmarès also boasts the prestigious hour record of 54.526km he set in what was perhaps the ultimate “race of truth” at London’s Lee Valley VeloPark in 2015.

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Born in the Belgian city of Ghent in 1980, Wiggins and his mother, Linda, moved to her parents’ house in Kilburn after his father, Gary, an Australian professional track cyclist, left them when Wiggins was two years old. “He abandoned us,” Wiggins said on an appearance on Desert Island Discs last year. “It’s never left me and it will continue to stay with me for the rest of my life.” Wiggins’s father had problems with alcohol and drugs and was found beaten and left for dead on a roadside in New South Wales in 2008. He later passed away in hospital.

For all his understandable abandonment issues, Wiggins had some fond memories of his dad and deliberately chose to end his competitive career with victory – alongside his old friend Mark Cavendish – at the famous Six Day race staged annually on the timbers of Ghent’s famous ’t Kuipke velodrome last November. “I always think of my dad when I’m in here,” he said. “He was a terrible father but I still idolise him as a bike rider because I wouldn’t be here without him.”

For all his Olympic medals, those world and Olympic time-trial titles, the eight world track titles and that famous win in France, it was perhaps a photo of Wiggins lounging on a golden throne in front of Hampton Court Palace, flicking victory Vs at photographers in the wake of his time-trial win at the London 2012 Olympics, that officially elevated him to the status of national treasure during a summer in which he also won the Tour de France with Team Sky. It was classic Wiggins: effortless cool mixed with contrarianism, the Kilburn mod playing up to the cameras as he sprawled in regal recline in surroundings that, despite being located less than 20 miles from where he grew up, could scarcely be further removed from Dibdin House in Kilburn.

As popular for his outspoken comments, dry sense of humour and fondness for the musical stylings of Paul Weller as he was for his talent as a cyclist, Wiggins went on to win that year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award before making something of a mockery of his man of the people credentials as he accepted a knighthood from the Queen at Buckingham Palace a year later. “It was quite nerve-racking actually,” he said after his investiture. “I’m still shaking now, to be honest. I mean, it’s quite humbling being here.”

For all his success and popularity Wiggins’s career path has not been without its bumps and potholes. A likable and funny but occasionally spiky character who has long been outspoken against the use of banned drugs in cycling, he was forced to confront the issue head on when the Fancy Bears hackers leaked his personal medical history, raising legitimate questions about his use of therapeutic use exemptions, which allow athletes with certain medical conditions to use substances that are banned by Wada. Wiggins was revealed to have had three intramuscular injections of a powerful corticosteroid that Team Sky claim was to treat a hay fever allergy shortly before each of his last three Grand Tours in 2011 and 2012.

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Wiggins had made no mention of receiving any such treatment in his 2012 autobiography, My Time, written in collaboration with the Guardian’s cycling correspondent William Fotheringham, and the Fancy Bears leaks have left Wiggins and the previously holier-than-thou Team Sky open to accusations they crossed an ethical line in a sport that has long been dogged by high-profile controversies, involving illegal drug use.

“I was paranoid about making excuses,” Wiggins explained in an interview with the Guardian when asked why he had not mentioned the allergy in the book. “It wasn’t something I was going to shout from the rooftops.”

Perhaps wisely he chose not to shout his retirement from the rooftops either, opting instead for a low-key statement on social media. While it made no mention of the controversy that will forever remain as a black mark on an otherwise pristine CV, it did once again parrot his heartwarmingly irrefutable assertion that he remains living proof that “kids from Kilburn” can win “Olympic golds and Tour de Frances”.