• 'It looks as if Chris will be the leader this year,' says Wiggins • Giro d'Italia will be Tour winner's main target for 2013

The 2012 Tour de France winner, Sir Bradley Wiggins, has changed tack again over whether he will set out to defend his title, claiming he is happy to work for his Sky team-mate Chris Froome in the race and make the Giro d'Italia his main focus.

"I would love to win a second Tour and if I get the chance to do it, not necessarily this season, that would be great," he told L'Equipe. "But it looks as if Chris will be the leader this year. That doesn't mean I'll be riding 200km a day on the front of the bunch for him. We will be there together as he was last year with me in the mountains.

"Something could happen to Chris … he could be sick, he could crash as happened to me in 2011 when we ended up without a team leader."

Sky's team principal, Sir Dave Brailsford, said in November that Froome would be the team's best bet of claiming back-to-back Tour titles, and Wiggins confirmed he would focus on the Giro. But Wiggins backtracked last month, saying he still entertained hopes of defending his title. Now he has switched positions again.

Wiggins is adamant there will be no issues between him and Froome after questions were raised during last year's Tour over his team-mate's attitude. "There won't be any problem between me and Chris. No doubts about reciprocal loyalty. He was ready to win in 2012 if anything happened to me."

In a second interview, with La Gazzetta dello Sport, Wiggins said he felt it would be harder to win the Giro than it had been to take victory in the Tour de France, due to the tough mountain climbs in Italy. "And there will be riders - I'm thinking of Vincenzo Nibali - who will be better prepared compared to the Tour. And [they] already know how you ride a Giro to win."

Wiggins added that the press reaction when he was knocked off his bike by a car in early November and injured a rib had astonished him. "I was in hospital with policemen outside the bedroom because all the press were going round trying to take pictures of me. My wife couldn't come and see me because there were journalists everywhere around our house and my kids couldn't come home from school because we didn't want people taking pictures of them. It was crazy."

The crash had occurred, he said, because he was trying to fit in training among media appointments. "The day of the accident I had a lot of things to do and I was training in the dark to make up for lost time. After that I cancelled all [the engagements]. I took three weeks out, told myself it was all getting ridiculous and that I should go back to training, go back to what I like to do. It was a turning point. All I wanted was to go back to riding my bike and win more races."

Wiggins has changed his programme leading up to May's Giro from his original plan, adding the Tour of Oman in place of the Tour of Algarve and the Liège-Bastogne-Liège Classic in the Ardennes in mid-April. The latter event, which is the oldest major one-day race on the calendar, is also one of the hilliest, and Wiggins will use it as a test of his form before the Giro.

The newly knighted sports personality of the year added that he had shaved off his trademark sideburns because he felt he was too easily recognised when out in public. "I don't want to be a celebrity," said Wiggins, explaining that at new year he went skiing in the Alps with friends and went to a New Year's Eve party dressed as Batman. "Someone recognised me in spite of the mask, asked me if I was Bradley Wiggins and I said I was called Jeremy ... I didn't want someone taking a photo of me dressed as Batman."