Interview With Bradley Wiggins

On Tuesday, a new cycling life will start for Bradley Wiggins when he begins racing in the Tour Down Under in the sunny climes of Adelaide. Temporarily, at least, he will turn his back on the short-distance track races in which he won gold, silver and bronze at the Athens Olympics last summer, the first British athlete in any discipline to win three medals for 40 years.

Instead, the 24-year-old from west London will embark on a hectic programme of road racing with his professional team, the French outfit Crédit Agricole, which he hopes will this year take him to the leader's pink jersey in the Giro d'Italia - never before worn by a Briton - and in the longer term, stage successes in the Tour de France. If Wiggins succeeds in his aim of becoming a true Tour de France contender, he has the potential to match the achievements of his mentor Chris Boardman, another British Olympic gold medallist who moved sideways into professional cycling on the road and who won three stages in the Tour, wearing the yellow jersey three times.

It could, however, have been very different. Before this change of direction, Wiggins had to overcome his qualms about competing in a side of cycling that has, in recent years, had an appalling image because of drug-taking - with a string of positive tests involving world and Olympic champions - high-profile trials and lurid press revelations.

Last June and July, police investigating the French team Cofidis discovered that Britain's biggest cycling star, David Millar, had used the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) to win the world time-trial title. It was a revelation that came close to ending the professional road-racing ambitions of the genial, enthusiastic Wiggins, tipped as Britain's next great cycling star since winning a junior world title in 1998.

'Before Athens I wanted to stop [road] cycling,' said Wiggins as he prepared to depart for Australia, reed-thin after several months of the most intensive road training he has ever done. 'I'd got sick of the road scene in the early season. I'd been ill, there had been pressure because I was not performing. I hit a bit of a low in April. The Cofidis affair started coming out, the first rumours about David Millar started coming out in L'Equipe , and I thought, "For God's sake, not Dave as well."

'I'd always looked up to Dave as a person with similar build, similar physical power to me, and I'd thought I can do what Dave's doing one day on the road, I'm as powerful as him and I just need a few years of concentrated road riding as well. It all started coming out and by the Tour it was all out about him. I thought that after Athens was all over if I won I would be totally satisfied with what I had achieved and I could stop.

'I got a bit pissed off about it all, a bit embittered towards the professional scene. I felt a bit embarrassed to be part of it really, especially when I came back into the British team. They were shell-shocked by it [the Cofidis affair and the Millar revelations] because they knew nothing about it, they'd just invested a bit more time in Dave the previous two years.'

He has met Millar since the 28-year-old Scot's dramatic fall from grace, and feels more sympathy than bitterness towards him. 'I feel sorry for him in many ways. He's lost an awful lot. He was an icon in the world of cycling, he had that sort of rock-star persona, and everyone liked him.'

Returning to the British team in the build-up to Athens enabled Wiggins to start enjoying his sport again. 'The more time I was spending with the British team, the more of a laugh I was having with them. It's clean, their way of cycling, it's more about what you can produce as an athlete. I was enjoying it more with them in the run-up to the Olympics as opposed to being with the professional team really. I began to think, "If I win the Olympics I'd be so happy to come back with this lot".

'That was in July, when I'd left Crédit Agricole to go and do nine weeks of Olympic preparation. I was with the British team and more was coming out - Oscar Camenzind [the former world champion] tested positive for EPO at that time as well - and I just thought, "This professional game is rife with it and I'm not prepared to go to those lengths. If that's what it takes to win a yellow jersey in the Tour, sod it." '

After winning the gold medal that had been his goal for four years, Wiggins took several weeks to decide what direction his career should take. 'Everyone seemed to have plans apart from me. I'd never given any thought to what I'd do post-Athens, I always knew what I'd like to do but I had no set plans. As well as that, Cath [his wife] had fallen pregnant and we needed to talk about it.'

The new goal he came up with was a combination of road and track: a full road programme for the next three years to find out how far he can get in races such as the Tour de France. That will be followed by a reversion to the track in 2007 to build up to the defence of his title in Beijing, with, in the longer term, the aim of taking three gold medals in three different Olympic Games. His chances of becoming one of Britain's greatest Olympians are enhanced by the fact that he will have strong chances in the team pursuit and madison.

'It was what I've always wanted, more than anything, to be an Olympic hero rather than a Tour de France star, something I had from childhood. When you are suddenly standing in front of a bunch of journalists being asked what it's like being a British Olympic legend it's a bit much to take in. When I finished the madison I had Matthew Pinsent come in to congratulate me, he was really impressed by my winning three medals. I remember saying to him, "What the hell are you doing here?"'

His wife's revelation to him that she was expecting their first child came two days before the final of the Olympic pursuit title in Athens. It completely transformed Wiggins's state of mind. 'You always get doubts, I was the favourite for the pursuit, I had the form, and I had to spend three days before the racing lying in the village wonder ing what Brad McGee [his main rival, from Australia] was doing. I started thinking I could win the silver, and perhaps bronze wouldn't be so bad. But I knew the difference between winning and losing: if I won I would be remembered as one of our greatest pursuiters, if I lost I would be just another good one.

'When Cath told me she was pregnant, all the doubts turned to supreme confidence. I was about to do it for someone else. It was, "Go out and bloody well do this, don't let anyone down". I was going out to win a gold medal and get financial security.' Looking at video footage of his qualifying ride in an Olympic record time of 4min15sec, he is shocked now at his air of total control, at his own gamesmanship as he tried to get the upper hand over McGee, his only rival.

'I put my arms up with 10 metres to go, put a finger up to the Aussies. I was rolling around the track pretending I wasn't breathing. It was like, "I've got a few more seconds in me". As I went down the ramp, I was making eye contact with McGee and winking at him. When he rode his qualifier, he went two-and-a-half seconds slower. He cracked in the last kilometre. They were, "How can we beat this guy?"'

It was not apparent at the time, but it was the best performance of Wiggins's life. In the final against McGee, he says he cracked in the final kilometre, but by then the gold medal was in the bag. 'The qualifying round was probably my best performance ever as a bike rider, but the moment the gold was won I went up the trackside, found Cath and said to her, "That baby is never going to have to worry".'

Wiggins's intensive spring racing programme could entail 30 days of racing at between 100 and 160 miles a time, as opposed to the total of seven-and-a-half miles that made up the three pursuit rounds he rode in winning gold in Athens. He has already ridden most of the events, such as the eight-day Paris-Nice and the single-day Classics such as the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, but they have always formed part of a campaign to build stamina for track events in the Olympics or the world championships. Now, they are targets in themselves.

'It's a lot of racing, but then I back off and just do specific training for the prologue of the Giro d'Italia. That's 1.2km, dead flat, dead straight, and I don't think I can be beaten by anyone in it apart from Brad McGee or perhaps Fabian Cancellara [winner of the Tour de France's time trial prologue in 2004]. I should at least be in the first four if I hit the form I'm expecting to hit. I want to ride well in the Giro, try to win a stage in a breakaway one day.

'I'm really excited about the challenge. In 2005, 2006 and 2007 I'll have three years concentrating on road racing. I'll see what I can do. If I can see an improvement my goal will be to be one of the best in the world at prologue time trials, win stages in the Tour de France, and win shorter stage races.'

Since the Olympics, cycling has seen further positive drug tests, notably for blood-doping by two members of the Swiss Phonak team, the Olympic time-trial champion and Tour de France star Tyler Hamilton and his team-mate Santi Pérez. It is impossible to tell what proportion of the professional peloton is dabbling with banned practices, but clearly, when Wiggins takes on his massive road-racing programme this year, he will be up against opponents - at least a handful, perhaps far more - who are using drugs or blood doping.

If Wiggins is to succeed, not letting this background affect his mind will be vital. To start with he is helped by the fact that Crédit Agricole, Wiggins's squad - and coincidentally Boardman's old team - has a zero-tolerance approach to the issue. 'Roger [Legeay, the team manager] believes that even if we only win 12 or 13 races a year, we don't play with our health. He's not willing to lose a sponsor who's shown loyalty over the years as opposed to losing one or two riders in the team for a positive test. That's great because we don't have that extra pressure that other teams have.'

He has also adopted the same philosophy as Boardman, who had to cope with the same problem. 'I came to the conclusion that I'm not going to give up cycling because some people are cheating. I'd just ridden four minutes 15 seconds [for 4,000 metres], which is the fastest in the world in a conventional racing position, I've beaten one of the fastest prologue riders in the world as well. If I can adapt for the road that physical potential that I've built up training on a vitamin C tablet from Boots and a multivit, why can't I beat the best in the world on the road on my day?

'I think Chris took that approach, and Chris was the best in the world on his day. I may be naive, but I think his career spanned the worst time for doping from 1994 to 1998 when he was in his prime. I think it's a bit better than it was then. There is obviously more testing, but whether riders are managing to get round the tests I don't know. There's a lot of riders who feel the same way.

'For example, Jens Voigt [a German with CSC who is one of the strongest riders on the flat stages of the Tour] is really anti-doping, and he's such an honest, hard-working rider. He says, quite rightly, that we should put these people at the back of the peloton , embarrass them, make them feel unwanted. But there's not enough of a stand in the peloton to do things like that.'

Like many of the younger generation within cycling, Wiggins feels that the sport has benefited in the long term from the massive drugs scandal of 1998, when riders' dependence upon EPO was put in the light of day. 'I think it was good for cycling, it couldn't have continued the way it was going, it had to come out, and six years on here we are with a lot more testing procedures and the awareness of it, which is the main thing. People say it's a bad thing, that all you read these days is articles about doping, but public awareness will be the downfall of it.'

There is, he says, a new breed of riders who wish to break with the past, led by stars such as Thomas Voeckler, the 25-year-old French national champion who led the 2004 Tour for 10 days. 'Voeckler said he was part of that new generation when he won the title, and there are guys like McGee, who turned pro in 1998 just before it all happened. McGee told me shocking stories about older riders handing drugs out and feeling under pressure to take them. I think the times have passed when there was a regime in the teams to do it. It still exists, but among individuals who go off and do their own thing.'

The refrain that runs through any conversation with Wiggins is responsibility: responsibility for the child that Catherine is expecting in April and the responsibility that goes with an Olympic gold medal. 'I need to take it on. I'm Olympic champion and there's no reason why I shouldn't get stuck in. I've ridden races like the Giro and Paris-Nice before, and I want to race more on guts as opposed to being cagey and saying, "This is preparation for this or that".'

Wiggins says that having achieved his life's ambition, the weight of the world is now off his shoulders. 'I feel like a new professional again. After Sydney, everything was about Athens. It was always about turning pro after Sydney, getting into the big races to get the endurance for Athens. I'm just excited about committing myself to something I've not been able to do for a few years. Everyone wants to see what I can do on the road, me more than anyone else.'