In an exclusive interview, the winner of the 2012 Tour de France tells all about his exhaustive preparations for the cobblestones of Paris-Roubaix, as he watches all his old videos of the event to give him the edge • Froome on the long, hellish and cobbled road from Paris to Roubaix • Wiggins to ride in Belgian sprint classic

Over the winter Sir Bradley Wiggins has gone back in time, making a return to his teenage years as a scrawny, cycling-mad youth. The 2012 Tour de France winner gathered up the VHS videos he had recorded in the mid-1990s from his childhood home in Kilburn, north London, and began watching editions of the Paris-Roubaix – “the Hell of the North” – Classic from 20 years ago. He went through his copies of the magazine Cycling Weekly from the time, all the better to learn about the unique qualities of the final target of his road racing career.

The first Paris-Roubaix Wiggins recalls was a 1993 victory for Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle of France, who finished a fraction of a tyre’s width ahead of Franco Ballerini of Italy on the Roubaix velodrome.

There was the truly epic 1994 edition, lashed by rain and snow, when the key duel between Andrei Tchmil of Russia and Johan Museeuw of Belgium took place 50km (31 miles) from the finish. Wiggins recalls: “Museeuw closed to within six seconds, Sean Yates was up there with Olaf Ludwig.”

This week, Wiggins, the multiple Olympic gold medallist enters the final phase of his five and a half year spell at Team Sky. He opted to miss last Friday’s E3 Grand Prix at Harelbeke – probably a wise move given that a spate of crashes hit several key classics riders, most notably Fabian Cancellara, and is expected to ride the Three Days of De Panne stage race from , Sunday’s Tour of Flanders, then next week’s Scheldeprijs one-dayer before Roubaix, his final event with the British squad.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bradley Wiggins rides in the Gent-Wevelgem one-day race in March 2015. Photograph: ERIC LALMAND/AFP/Getty Images

Wiggins seems determined not to say he can win at Roubaix, which is wise given the amount of variables that can affect an individual rider in this seven-hour Classic, and given that this spring his team-mates Geraint Thomas and Ian Stannard have shown spectacular form to win major Belgian one-day events over cobbles – the E3 for Thomas, Het Nieuwsblad for Stannard. Wiggins says: “With Luke Rowe, there are potentially four British riders in Sky who could be at the front. If we get our tactics right, one of us can win – Ian, Gee [Geraint Thomas] or me, it’s about one of us winning, not about all of us trying to beat each other.”

So far, his buildup has gone pretty much to plan. “I felt good at Paris-Nice, doing a lot of work on the front and training has gone well. If that’s anything to go by, I should be up there. Compared to where I was this time last year, it is a complete contrast. I was dropped on a mountain at Tirreno-Adriatico last year because I was too heavy, so I went to Majorca and starved myself to lose weight to try to get selection for the Tour de France. Paris-Roubaix was just what I was doing; Ian broke his back, so I was put in the Tour of Flanders, I finished 30th after staying in the wheels all day and thought, ‘bloody hell, I felt great there’. So a week later I put myself in a better position [at Roubaix] and could have won it.”

The hours spent in front of the videos this winter were not down to mere nostalgia deriving from the fact that, as he has said so often, Wiggins is a fan of the sport with a love of its history, although he concedes: “Roubaix was one of my childhood dream races.”

There was a performance purpose behind it, based on the same attention to detail that won him the Tour in 2012. “I’ve been timing all the sectors of cobbles and the bits between them. The longest is section three” – Quiévy to Saint-Python, 106.5km (65 miles) into the race – “which takes about five minutes”. The sector at Carrefour de l’Arbre, usually the most important in the race, takes “about 3min 20sec”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bradley Wiggins during his victorious 2012 Tour de France. Photograph: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

Wiggins’ goal was to tailor his training over the winter specifically to the demands of this unique Classic, which includes the notorious multiple sections of cobbles. At best, in the dry, the pavé make Roubaix a test of strength and nerve, but in the wet, the potholes are hidden by puddles and the slippery mud brings in an element of chance, as seen in the stage of last year’s Tour de France that tackled some of the same roads.

The difference compared to training for the Tour, Wiggins says, lies in the intensity and brevity of the physical effort involved in racing hard through the cobbled sectors en route to Roubaix or up one of the cobbled hills in the Tour of Flanders. “They’re mainly between a mile and a mile and three-quarters in Roubaix, they’re shorter in Flanders, so it comes down to explosive power for a minute followed by [aerobic] threshold. It’s about the repetition of that. It’s not about power-weight ratio or a time trial where you can predict the power you need. And it’s about making those efforts at the end of six or seven hours.”

Wiggins has trained more on the flat, ridden at time-trial pace far more on his road-racing bike – when he got on his time-trial bike four days before the prologue time trial in Paris-Nice it was the first time he had touched it since the autumn. The day we spoke, his long ride that morning had included two 20-minute time-trial efforts on his road-racing bike on a local time-trial course, exercises he would always have carried out on a time-trial machine in the past.

The Olympic and world time-trial champion has also put on weight. He is five kg (11lb) heavier than when he won the world time-trial title last September and seven kg (1st 4lb) above his Tour de France winning weight, meaning he is roughly the same build as he was in his days as a track-racing specialist. Part of that is upper-body muscle put on in the gym to help him make those explosive efforts when fighting for position before a cobbled sector, or sprinting up a cobbled climb.

As well as studying the videos, Wiggins and three of Sky’s Classics squad – Stannard, Bernhard Eisel and Christian Knees - made three trips to reconnoitre the cobbles in December, January and February, riding the final 120 or 130km from just before the key sector in the forest of Arenberg, near Valenciennes. “They are really beneficial, you normally only look at the cobbles the Wednesday before, and there’s so much going on you take your eyes off it all a bit.”

One bonus of this, Wiggins says, has been the chance to ride the cobbles in the wet. “It’s always bad conditions in winter so it’s good to see it like that. How you approach it in the wet is down to commitment. You creep over the first sector because you don’t know what to expect but by the end of it you’re pressing on everywhere with your wheels slipping around, and you’re loving it. It’s like a mountain bike ride where you get confident at the end. It won’t be as much of a shock if it’s like the Tour last year.”

Looking back to last year’s Roubaix, Wiggins feels he or his companion from Sky in the final escape, Thomas, could have won the race. “I froze in the finale. I was so focused up to Carrefour de l’Arbre, and after I went across to the break with Tom Boonen and Niki Terpstra I couldn’t help it, I had to pinch myself a bit. The amount of times I’d stood in the velodrome having packed, watched the guys going for it and thought ‘I’d love to do that’. I should have talked more with Geraint. I remember being at the back of the group and staying there to the finish.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sir Bradley Wiggins in action on the cobbles of the 112th edition of the Paris - Roubaix from Compiegne to Roubaix. Photograph: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

The difference this year could boil down to one thing: motivation. “I’m better physically than when I was ninth last year, but the question is whether it translates to anything. It’s about committing on the day. You’ve all seen it; when I’m committed I’m right in there, when I’m not I’m dawdling at the back being dropped on climbs.

“The good thing for me is that there is no excuse not to do it. In the past there were always reasons – looking to the Tour, Romandie, the Dauphiné – but doing the hour record seven weeks later is no reason to sit up in Roubaix.

“You have to put yourself in position for the sectors. When you approach Arenberg or – in the Tour of Flanders – the Kwaremont, you’re going at 65km/h (40mph), counting down the distance – 300m to get there, 200, 100 – you know you are going to hit them at 60km/h (37mph) and if you are fifth or 10th wheel you will be OK. If you’re in 20th you start thinking it’s not fun anymore and that’s when you slip back. That’s where the commitment comes in. You have to put everything out of your mind. You have to be willing to die for the cause.”