4 Sir Bradley Wiggins

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Sir Bradley Wiggins once described the question over whether he could win the Tour de France as “the monkey on my back”. But, having shaken it free and added Olympic gold to his Maillot Jaune in 2012, that monkey was replaced with a hulking silverback gorilla with a needle in its arm.

“A year ago, I didn’t feel pride to be the winner of the Tour de France,” explains Britain’s first champion of La Grande Boucle when Sport meets him during his pre-season Team Sky training camp in Majorca.

“With everything going on with the whole Lance thing breaking, it just felt like there was a lot of anger among a lot of people. And everyone turned to me as the current winner and said: ‘What are you going to do about it?’”

The whole Lance thing: Armstrong confessing to Oprah Winfrey and the world that he had doped to win all seven of his Tour de France titles, and the subsequent questions over how cycling was going to start to rehabilitate itself. But Wiggins was, he says, focused on trying to come to terms with how his own life had changed. No wonder, then, that he didn’t feel like he was in any position to pick up the shattered pieces of one of the great sporting fairytales.

“I kind of shied away from it all, and didn’t really want to speak about it,” Wiggins explains. “If anyone piped up and asked what it was like to win the Olympics in London, I’d beam and talk about it with great pride. But the Tour stuff…”

As he tapers off, Sport suggests this past year has been one of gradual adjustment.

“I think last year was,” Wiggins agrees. “And I tried to deny it a lot. This time last year, with a lot of the interviews, I felt quite dismissive and blunt about everything. I didn’t go on all the TV shows, I just wanted to concentrate on racing – but I was pretty much going through the motions. “So that adjustment over the past 12 months, watching on the telly last summer, Chris [Froome, his fellow Brit and Team Sky colleague] winning it. It helped me embrace being a winner of the Tour de France a bit more. I have more pride now, and I’m happy to talk about it. Before, it was: ‘Oh yeah, I suppose I’ve won it, ain’t I? Puts me in the same category as Lance.’ That’s how I felt.”

Wiggins watched the Tour on television last summer, having revealed he would not defend his title after pulling out of the Giro d’Italia injured. He admits his preparation for last season could have been better, and that this winter has been a “big contrast” to the previous one.

“I was playing catch-up quite a lot early last season, but I got back to a really good level for the Tour of Italy and felt ready to go,” he says. “But I got injured subsequently and had the summer to reflect on things and build towards the end of the season, which was the Tour of Britain [which he won] and the World Championships [where he took time trial silver].

“That led to me having a good start to the winter because I finished the season on a high, fitter, and I’m at a good level now – probably as good as I’ve ever been at the end of January. That bodes well for a good start to the season.”

Wiggins tackles the Strade Bianche one-day race in Tuscany tomorrow, then the Tirreno-Adriatico stage race next week. There he will ride with Froome, before both men take on Milan-San Remo – at 299km, the longest one-day event on the calendar – on March 23.

But it is the spring cobbled classics – specifically, Paris-Roubaix – that will be among Wiggins’ primary targets for the season. It’s a curious choice, given the sheer unpredictability of racing on cobbles (right) – but it is perhaps a sign of a newfound freedom for the 33-year-old.

“This is the eighth time I will have done Roubaix,” Wiggins explains. “Now I guess, with Chris as the defending [Tour de France] champion, he carries that burden and that pressure. That almost liberates me a little bit to go: ‘Okay, Brad. We can take a risk with you maybe crashing in Roubaix or whatever.’

“So I get the opportunity to have a crack at that. The demands of that race suit my style; it’s about riding long periods on your own.

“Obviously everyone would love to win Paris-Roubaix, but that would take a lot of things to come right on that day, and you need a lot of luck with punctures and things. But, to be in that mix at the end, as an ex-Tour winner, there’s not many people who have done that apart from the greats: Eddie Merckx, Bernard Hinault. That would be a nice thing to have and show your versatility more than anything.”

Paris-Roubaix is one of the oldest races in terms of one-day classics, but the Tour of California – another target – will hold only its ninth edition in May. So what’s the attraction?

“California has become a huge race now,” says Wiggins. “It’s at the same time as the Giro, and that whole American scene is growing. We have 21st Century Fox as a co-sponsor this year. Ten years ago, a brand like that wanting to be a part of cycling would have been unheard of.

“That North American market is huge to the team now. They are happy for me to do it, and it gives me another challenge. Cycling over there is huge, and they’ve kind of been robbed of their heroes… you know, with the Lance thing.”

There’s that name again: the silverback gorilla. We start to apologise for returning to the subject. Wiggins interrupts, insisting he is happy to talk about it. So what, if anything, has changed in cycling in the year that has passed since Armstrong’s confession?

“Obviously it’s had a lot of publicity, and as time has gone on you’re finding out more detail,” says Wiggins. “More people are writing books, more riders are coming out and admitting to what they did. It’s shocking for a lot of people to hear that, especially because these people were heroes to so many. Without Lance Armstrong, and without all the doping scandal of Armstrong, the sport would not be where it is today. Him winning those years raised the profile of the sport in the early 2000s.

“But it’s completely changed now. Just look at the amount of testing. Okay, people are still getting caught: three people last year at the Giro d’Italia. But that’s a good thing. People will always try and cheat. Individuals will always try to cheat. It’s not happening on a mass scale now, where teams are doing it like US Postal used to.”

Wiggins also points out that the commercial side of cycling is dependent on it cleaning its act up, and stresses that the trust is there from major backers. “The UCI has also cleaned itself up,” he continues. “[Recently elected president] Brian Cookson is in now, and he wants a complete overhaul of the whole thing. And 99.9 per cent of the riders are on board, understand and are riding clean. You always get that handful of riders who are institutionalised in those ways and have come back to the sport, tried it again and subsequently got caught. The fact people are getting caught is a good thing – and you really can count them on one hand each year.

“It has changed. There is a little bit of ignorance in terms of people just dismissing it and saying: ‘All cyclists are cheats.’ But I don’t think they are real fans of the sport. Especially with the world of Twitter now, they’ll always complain about something. Actually, if you go in-depth into the sport, and you look at the number of tests per year, and you look at what WADA are doing and what the UCI are doing, we are probably leading the way as a sport worldwide now, for testing and for clean sport. It’s worlds apart from where it used to be.”

Given the number of cyclists who have confessed to or been busted for doping in recent history, Wiggins jokes that he still doesn’t know if he won two Tours. But he is under no illusion when it comes to the questions he is likely to face if he does return to ride the Tour with Froome this year – especially if Team Sky prove to be as dominant as they were in 2012 and 2013.

It’s a sad reality that a team bossing a Grand Tour – like Armstrong’s US Postal team used to – is now treated with suspicion. Or, as Sky found last year, outright hostility. But Wiggins has said he wants to be there for Froome in terms of dealing with the doping questions, and helping last year’s winner shoulder the burden of being at the centre of what was at times a malevolent atmosphere around his team. Does he think those questions will come again?

“I’d say they will, yeah,” Wiggins reasons. “I’d just like to challenge the people asking those questions a little more. Maybe in a more articulate way than two years ago, when I called them all wankers. I just feel more ready for it now – and more of a responsibility to not shy away from those questions. I am proud to be a winner of the Tour de

France, with no history and no skeletons in the closet. So I’ll challenge people: the real hypocrites of the sport who are asking those questions.

“Even [journalist and former pro] Paul Kimmage, to an extent. Someone summed it up for me: ‘Paul Kimmage: he took drugs, and he was still shit.’ And he has the cheek to challenge us on a daily basis. So it’s a funny old thing.”

There are, says Wiggins, tough years ahead for cycling – and for Froome in particular at the Tour de France. “You have to understand, half the people there are going to want to talk about doping,” he expands. “You’re going to have to justify yourself. Which is sad. Particularly for Chris, who could dominate the Tour for five or six years off the back of that Lance era. And he has to live with that. And that’s going to be hard.”

As for the rivalry with Froome, Wiggins insists they have reconciled their differences, having spent time together at Sky’s Majorcan training base over the winter. “I don’t think we’re threatened by each other any more,” he says. “We’ve both won our Tours and that puts an ease among the team. It feels like we can actually enjoy it more this year.”

Hopefully we all will – Wiggins in particular.

He will certainly find the riding is easier without that ruddy great gorilla on his back.