• Holder of seven Olympic medals tells crowd ‘this might not be my last race’ • But then admits: ‘Much as my heart wants to, my head is saying no’

Sir Bradley Wiggins followed his last-ditch victory in the Ghent six-day race with his fellow world Madison champion, Mark Cavendish, by retaining a certain amount of wriggle room over his future plans by telling the crowd “this might not be my last race” as the pair were smothered in a shower of confetti.

Notwithstanding his eight Olympic medals, the Tour de France win, the world and Olympic time trial titles and eight world track titles, this has been a career built on ambiguities and contradictions and so it ended – probably.

Whatever he said in the heat of the moment Wiggins sounded afterwardslike a man who has accepted that this is indeed the end of the road. There was no mention of the controversies that have dogged him and Team Sky since the leak of his therapeutic use exemptions in mid-September; that episode and its implications have not gone away but there is clearly little more that he feels he wants to say about it.

Bradley Wiggins set to end career with victorious return to birthplace Read more

Asked if this was indeed his last race, Wiggins said: “I don’t know. I’m just going to enjoy the moment,” but then he gave what sounded like a confession that he will indeed retire. “I’ve got to be realistic. Much as my heart wants to, my head is saying no. I wouldn’t like to come back next year and not win and not be strong. At some point you’ve got to stop and say this is it and I think for sure this is my last Ghent six, 18 years since my first, 13 years since my last win here. It’s been a bloody good innings.”

He named London 2012 as his career high point, so too leading out Cavendish on the Champs Élysées, yellow jersey pacing the rainbow jersey of world road champion; the pair’s careers have run largely in tandem, and he noted, with his cycling historian’s hat on that the last winners of the yellow jersey and green jersey in the Tour de France here before him and the Manxman were Eddy Merckx and Patrick Sercu, the latter the greatest six-day rider of all time.

Next year, he said, he is likely to concentrate on supporting the young riders in his eponymous team, adding that he is unlikely to race with them. “It’s easy now sitting here with all the glory of winning to think: ‘Yeah let’s do it all again,’ but I wouldn’t like at any moment next year to think: ‘Stupid idiot, why did he carry on?’ I always wanted to go out on top and it’s been an incredible year: I’ve won a world title and Olympic title, the Ghent six with Cav: what else is there? My goal now is to get in the gym, get absolutely shredded and be the fittest team manager in the peloton.”