On a mild winter night in Majorca, in a grand but empty hotel on the edge of the sea, Bradley Wiggins is at his concentrated best. It hardly matters that the hotel would be shut entirely for three months were it not for an elite group of road and track cyclists who have turned it into a training base as they enter the most momentous year of their careers. And it does not even register with a maverick like Wiggins that Friday 27 January means it is exactly six months to the start of the Olympic Games.

Wiggins is locked inside deeper themes than date-checking. The 31-year-old will attempt something more remarkable this year than just trying to add to his collection of six Olympic medals, including three golds, in London. Five days before the opening ceremony to his home Olympics, Wiggins hopes to stand on the podium at the conclusion of another epic Tour de France – after competing hard for the yellow jersey. And then, on 28 July, Wiggins will be part of a small team striving to help Mark Cavendish win Britain's first gold medal of 2012 in the road race. Three days later, Wiggins will chase personal glory in the individual time trial – an event in which he won silver in the world championships last September.

He now leans forward and ignores the piped piano music and the more raucous sound of Cavendish laughing as he drifts through the deserted lounge. Cav gives us a wave but Wiggins, talking intently, doesn't even notice. He is bent on explaining why he feels so different in 2012.

"Last year proved that I've become much more of a complete rider," Wiggins says. "I'm not just a time triallist any more. I've become more of a climber now – who still keeps that time trial as strong as ever. It gives me such self-belief. I feel a different athlete. I feel a different person in a lot of ways. I feel much more professional and dedicated to my trade than I used to be. I appreciate this ability I've got – and don't take it for granted any more. That fits every aspect of my life now."

I've interviewed Wiggins at various points in his career. We've got drunk together and scoured the depths and peaks of past depressions and achievements. But I've never met Wiggins in a mood this measured yet confident. His new serenity is tied to the realisation he has only a few years left at this exalted level.

"It's making the most of the time I've got and not wanting to look back in five years and wishing I'd done more. This is my fourth Olympics but I've also realised I'm a bit of an exception. I do the road as well and the Tour comes first. I've got an opportunity that not many people have – to be the leader of Team Sky as I enter the prime years of my career. I have the potential to be up there in the Tour de France – not many people get to do that. And not many people get the chance to then compete at the Olympics a week later."

Wiggins shakes his head, an old mod suddenly transfixed by his own tumultuous journey running parallel to the rise of British cycling. "I'd just won the junior worlds at 18 and Peter Keen [now the director of performance at UK Sport] called me into his office and said: 'The National Lottery are giving me £6m to start this programme and I want you to be a product of that.' I was announced as the first rider on this world-class performance plan. That was 14 years ago.

"I'm glad I've had all these up-and-down moments since then because they make who you are. In some ways these younger riders don't realise what they've got. A lot of them have just walked into a team of Olympic champions. But I remember how we started from nowhere and built it up over the years. When we finally got to the top we appreciated what we'd achieved."

The scope of Wiggins's ambition is illustrated further by him now accepting that the twin peaks of the Tour and the Olympic time trial mean he will almost certainly be forced to relinquish another medal opportunity in the team pursuit – the blue riband event of the track. "I've got too many options," he shrugs, "but I can't do everything."

At the 2008 Olympics, Wiggins won gold in both the team and individual pursuit. "But a lot changed after Beijing. They dropped the individual pursuit from the Olympic programme and that made it an easy decision for me to go on the road."

After the shock of his fourth-place finish in the Tour de France the year after Beijing, Wiggins was unveiled as the feted leader of the newly launched Team Sky in 2010. The heavily funded glamour boys of British cycling flopped badly. Wiggins slumped to a disappointing 24th and he and his boss, Dave Brailsford, conceded that Team Sky had been too pompous in a race as unforgiving as the Tour de France.

Last year was different. Wiggins won the venerable Critérium du Dauphiné – and over eight days of imperious riding carved out a significant gap between him and Cadel Evans, who came second. In the Tour de France, however, an assured Wiggins suffered a bad accident on the seventh stage and broke his collarbone. Evans eventually won the race.

The way in which Wiggins reacted offers a telling insight into his changed mentality. "I was remarkably philosophical. In hospital I cheered up everyone. It helped that I spoke to Bella [his five-year-old daughter] on the phone. She'd just come out of school and she said: 'Do you know Bradley Wiggins crashed out of the Tour today.' She doesn't associate me with the Brad Wiggins she sees on the telly. I said: 'Yeah, I saw that.'"

Wiggins laughs, with wry tenderness, before remembering how he soon got back on his bike on the treadmill in his garden shed. He turned the heaters up on summer days and prepared for the Tour of Spain the following month. And he allowed himself to watch the Tour de France on television. "By the third week I was like a kid again. I loved it. There was only one moment when I felt disappointment. I saw one of the finishes and [Alberto] Contador had been dropped. The Schleck brothers were there, with Cadel, and I just thought: 'Fuck, I could've been there.'"

He finished third in the Tour of Spain – a result that still fills him with pride. "It was such a massive step forward for me, and Team Sky, but I've not dwelled on it as much as other past successes. It's just been a case of: 'Right, let's move on to the next challenge.'"

Can he imagine winning the Tour de France this year? "Um … yeah … winning it," Wiggins says softly, turning the concept over in his mind. "It takes a lot to win the Tour de France. I certainly think I'm physically capable now – more than ever. I proved that last year. But it's as much about the process that goes into it in the eight months before the Tour as much as me saying: 'Yeah I can win it.' It's a way of life. A complete mentality and you need to buy into it a long way out. I've done that.

"It's just belief really. I believe in myself and the people around me. I just have to keep putting the work in, and I'll get the rewards. I just don't know what those rewards are yet."

If it's now possible to imagine Wiggins on the podium in Paris, how does he then move on to the Olympics without falling apart? "The main thing will be to get out of that bubble of the Tour as quickly as possible. If you come out of the Tour with a result you're going to be in demand for days – and it will be important to avoid that demand until after the Olympics. That's going to be difficult from the team's perspective because it could be the biggest thing ever for us. But I'll leave it to Dave. The ideal scenario would be to go home as soon as possible. And a few days later you drive down the M6 to the Olympics."

He grins at a surreal thought. "After the Tour you don't want to be sat on Daybreak the next morning with Adrian Chiles, or whoever, when you've got the Olympics five days later."

Wiggins will compete for the Tour podium and then try to close the gap that exists between him and Tony Martin, the world champion time triallist from Germany. "He's the best by a long way right now," Wiggins says. "Tony's not chasing anything on the road like I am. The beauty for him is that he rode the Tour of Spain just before the worlds and where I poured everything of myself into a brutal race, he could sit up and save himself. I don't have that beauty. But that's the challenge – for me to do both. So to actually beat Tony in London and win the time trial would be huge, especially after the Tour."

Only Cavendish can really understand what Wiggins will attempt this year. Having joined Team Sky, and being determined to add to the 20 stage victories he has already secured in his staggering career on the Tour de France, Cavendish is also bent on Olympic gold in the road race. One of the most fascinating sporting stories of 2012 will be how Wiggins and Cavendish gel. They have been close for years but, driven by emotion, they have also fallen out – most notably after the last Olympics when Wiggins was too shattered after his two gold medals to help Cavendish and him win the Madison.

"We had a huge disappointment in Beijing and you know Cav – he wears his heart on his sleeve. I hold up my hands but it was as much his disappointment at the situation we were both in." Wiggins has his half-dozen Olympic medals; Cavendish has none. So the sprinter is desperate to win the road race. "I think it would be massive," Wiggins says. "It would be Cav's biggest victory ever."

Yet it is again unlikely that Cavendish will be able to rely much on Wiggins – for the road race is just a few days before the time trial. "At the worlds we had a team of eight to help Cav. But there's just five at London. And you need to discount the one that has to do the time trial [Wiggins himself] for he's unlikely to finish. So you've got just three riders helping Cav. It's going to be difficult for everyone but they're planning for that already. There may have to be a compromise at the Tour."

How has Cavendish's arrival changed the Team Sky dynamics? "It would be easy to take the negatives of Cav coming into this team and think: 'Ah, well, they might bring in a few riders that suit him more than me.' But me and Cav have such a strong bond and there are so many positives to take from him joining us. We can really profit from each other. Some of the leadership skills he brings to the team, and the way he dictates when we're on the road, will take a lot of pressure off me. It's going to be exciting. And we could be invincible this year as a team."

The following morning, as track cyclists such as Ed Clancy and Laura Trott turn right out of the hotel for their Olympic training, Wiggins and Cavendish veer left towards the Team Sky bikes and cars. Having already slogged through an arduous gym session, the mood is serious as they prepare for a long day in the saddle. The multiple Olympic medallist and the serial stage-winner bury their hands in their Lycra and apply enough cream to stop any chafing. Such an unedifying routine soon restores the usual banter.

When Wiggins ducks back inside, for a last-minute visit to the loo, Cavendish takes his chance. He picks up Wiggins's bike, which is worth around £12,000, and hangs it from a railing above the entrance.

Wiggins does not even ask what happened when he sees his dangling bike. He looks at Brailsford and, with a knowing sigh, says: "Have you seen what the fat little fuck has done now?"

Once the laughter has died away and they're back on their bikes, Wiggins, Cavendish and the other riders settle down in silence. We're at the back, in a hired car, trailing the riders as, at a steady pace, they take the long road towards the mountains. The hours drift by – only broken by a brief break as 12 cyclists jump off their bikes and, with their backs to us, empty their bladders in a communal pee.

After that stoppage, and as a small gesture to us, Wiggins drops back from the peleton and the support vehicles. He allows the others to move ahead and then, riding alongside our car, chatting just a little, he offers a snapshot in close-up of his training routine. Then, without a word, and just the slightest of waves, he moves ahead, pedalling faster and faster. In those quiet moments on a winter day, with his head down and his gaze fixed on the blurring tar flashing beneath him, Wiggins looks ready for a year like no other.