Bradley Wiggins

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Bradley Wiggins Biography

Professional cyclist, known for becoming the first British winner of the Tour De France in 2012.

He first began bicycle racing at the age of 12.

He won his first Olympic gold medal at the 2004 games, then won two more in 2008.

He married Catherine Wiggins in 2004; the couple has two children.

He became one of the world’s most dominant cyclists after the career of Lance Armstrong started to plummet.

In September Wiggins won the national time trial championship in Buckinghamshire, and in September at the road world championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland, was on course for a bronze medal in the time trial, until a mechanical problem and a delay getting a replacement bike ended with him finishing in 21st place. In October he ended the season by winning the Herald Sun Tour in Victoria, Australia, after helping teammates for most of the race. He led the race after winning the time trial on stage five in Geelong, beating second-placed teammate Svein Tuft by fourteen seconds.

Wiggins then rode the Tour de Romandie and the Giro d’Italia, as preparation for the Olympics in August. At the Giro he was part of the lead-out train that helped Cavendish win two stages. Wiggins came fourth in the final stage’s 28.5 km (17.7 mi)-long time trial in Milan, six seconds behind teammate Marco Pinotti, finishing the race in 134th place, three hours, one minute and 39 seconds down on overall winner Alberto Contador of Astana.

Early in the season, Wiggins rode the Tour of Qatar, in which he lost out on contention for the general classification after being caught out by a split in the peloton and then finished third in the race’s individual time trial stage behind Cancellara and Niki Terpstra, his first opportunity to wear his rainbow skinsuit. Wiggins then took part in the traditional opening race of the classics season, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, finishing 44th as his teammate Ian Stannard took victory.

He is a well-known mod and owns a collection of classic motor scooters and guitars from the 1960s and 1970s. He is a keen musician and guitarist and in December 2012 he made a surprise appearance at a Paul Weller charity concert, playing guitar on “That’s Entertainment”; and together recorded a special for BBC Radio 6 Music discussing their love of music and mod culture, broadcast on Boxing Day. He supports Liverpool Football Club, Rangers Football Club and Wigan Warriors rugby league club, and in 2012 the latter gave him a life membership, which he described as his highlight of the year. Wiggins presented the winner of the European Super League’s 2012 Man of Steel Award to the Warriors player Sam Tomkins.

On the road he won stage one of the Four Days of Dunkirk and the prologue of the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, before competing in the Tour de France and finishing fourth in the prologue in London. On stage six Wiggins launched a solo breakaway after 2 km (1.2 mi) of racing, leading the race for 190.5 km (118.4 mi), before being caught by the peloton with 7 km (4.3 mi) remaining. It was seen as a tribute to British rider Tom Simpson, on the 40th anniversary of his death in the 1967 Tour de France, but was a gift to his wife on her birthday, with Wiggins only finding out about the date’s significance after the race. He received the stage’s combativity award, for the most aggressive rider. Cofidis withdrew from the race before stage 16 after Cristian Moreni failed a doping test. Wiggins and his teammates were interviewed by police and had their hotel rooms searched. In the aftermath of the positive drug tests on Moreni and on race leader Alexander Vinokourov of Astana, Wiggins spoke out against dopers in the Tour and threw away his Cofidis kit in a bin in Pau Pyrénées Airport, vowing never to race for the team again.

Wiggins was born on 28 April 1980 in Ghent, Flanders, Belgium, to an Australian father, Gary Wiggins, and a British mother, Linda. His father lived in Belgium as a professional cyclist. His father left the family when Wiggins was two. Wiggins moved with his mother to her parents’ house in Villiers Road, Willesden Green, north-west London, then to a Church Commission flat at Dibdin House estate in neighbouring Maida Vale. He was educated at St Augustine’s junior school and then St Augustine’s Church of England High School in Kilburn, where his mother was a secretary. He has a younger half-brother, Ryan, from his mother and her partner Brendan, who separated when Wiggins was in his late teens.

Sir Bradley Marc Wiggins, CBE (born 28 April 1980) is a British former professional road and track racing cyclist, who competed professionally between 2001 and 2016. Nicknamed “Wiggo”, he began his cycling career on the track, but made the transition to road cycling and is one of the few cyclists in the modern era to gain significant elite level success in both those forms of professional cycling. He is the only rider to have combined winning both World and Olympic championships on both the track and the road, as well as winning the Tour de France, and holding the iconic track hour record. In addition, he has worn the leader’s jersey in each of the three Grand Tours of cycling and held the world record in team pursuit on multiple occasions.

In 1992, aged 12, he entered his first race, the West London Challenge 92, on the unopened A312 dual carriageway in Hayes, west London. Later that year he broke a collarbone in a road accident. He received £1,700 compensation for his injuries. He gave his mother £700 and used the rest to buy his first racing bicycle. “At 12”, he recalled, “I told my art teacher, I’m going to be Olympic champion, I’m going to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour.” He joined the Archer Road Club, where his father had been a member in the late 1970s. He raced at Herne Hill Velodrome and on the road around Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. He gained domestic sponsorship from Condor Cycles’s Olympia Sport and then Team Brite. He represented Westminster in the London Youth Games as a teenager, and in 2010 he was inducted into the London Youth Games Hall of Fame.

Football was his first passion and he was an Arsenal fan, although he would watch rivals Tottenham Hotspur play because his friends supported them. He discovered cycling when his mother told him to watch the television coverage of the individual pursuit final of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, which Briton Chris Boardman won. She explained it was one of the events at which his father had been successful. He watched the rest of the Olympics and fell in love with cycling and the Olympics itself.

At 16, he won the 1 km (0.6 mi) time trial at the 1996 junior national track championships at Saffron Lane sports centre in Leicester. Selectors invited him to train at weekends at Manchester Velodrome. After leaving school he enrolled on a BTEC foundation course in business studies, but left due to cycling commitments. At the 1997 junior national track championships he won the one-kilometre time trial, 3 km (1.9 mi) individual pursuit, points race and scratch race. He was the only British competitor for the 1997 junior track world championships in Cape Town, coming 16th in the individual pursuit and fourth in the points race.

His breakthrough came in June 1998, winning the three-kilometre individual pursuit at the junior track world championships in Cuba, aged 18. The following week, he retained his titles at the junior national track championships in Manchester. He represented England at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, finishing fourth in the individual pursuit, and was a member of the team that won a silver medal in the team pursuit, his first senior medal. He became a full-time Lottery-funded athlete, with a grant of nearly £20,000 a year (equivalent to £35000 in 2020).

Wiggins endured a difficult relationship with his father Gary Wiggins, who made no effort to contact Bradley for 14 years, since leaving the family when Bradley was two years old. Bradley only knew his father had been a professional cyclist. Their first meeting was in 1999, when Bradley was at a training camp in Australia; also meeting his two half-sisters from relationships his father had in Australia before and after the one with his mother. They next met the following year, when Bradley was back in Australia training and had gone out three weeks in advance to stay with Gary. Bradley quickly became disillusioned at his father’s alcohol and drug problems, and they never met again. Gary Wiggins died in Aberdeen, New South Wales in 2008, aged 55. Bradley did not attend the funeral.

In 1999, he began training with the Great Britain team pursuit squad and rode the PruTour – now known as the Tour of Britain, his first stage race at that level. In October he competed in the track world championships in Berlin, coming fifth in the team pursuit, and with partner Rob Hayles, came tenth in the Madison, securing qualification for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. At the Olympics he won a bronze medal in the team pursuit, beating France in the bronze medal match, and came fourth in the Madison with Hayles. In October 2000, he took silver in the team pursuit at the track world championships in Manchester, losing to Germany in the final by under half a second.

In 2001, he signed for the Linda McCartney Racing Team, a British professional road cycling team, but it disbanded after internal problems. He was briefly seen in Sigma Sport colours after the collapse of the Linda McCartney team, but then secured further lottery funding, and began racing for the British national team. He came second in the prologue of the Tour of Rhodes, two seconds behind Fabian Cancellara of Mapei–Quick-Step, before winning the general classification in the Cinturón a Mallorca and Flèche du Sud. In September he crashed his bike, requiring two metal pins in his right wrist. Two weeks later he went to the track world championships in Antwerp, managing seventh place in the individual pursuit and consecutive silver in the team pursuit.

Wiggins is married to Catherine (née Cockran), whom he met during the 2002 Commonwealth Games, after first meeting as juniors in 1997; they have three children together, Ben, Rebekah and Isabella. The family lives in Eccleston, Lancashire, close to the Manchester Velodrome, the home of British Cycling and Team Ineos.

He joined the French team Française des Jeux in 2002, relocating to Nantes, and soon became homesick, finding it a huge contrast to the British Cycling set-up. At the Commonwealth Games in Manchester he won silver medals in the individual pursuit, losing to Française des Jeux teammate Bradley McGee (Australia) in the final, and team pursuit, beaten by Australia, who set a new world record with a time of three minutes and 59.583 seconds. At the track world championships in Copenhagen, he came fifth in the individual pursuit and won a bronze medal in the team pursuit. Wiggins was frustrated with his result in the individual pursuit at the world championships and became disillusioned with his future with Française des Jeux. British Cycling then enlisted the newly retired Chris Boardman as his mentor.

In May 2003, Wiggins made his Grand Tour debut at the Giro d’Italia. On the 18th stage he was eliminated from the race, finishing outside of the time limit in a group of 53 riders. In the summer he competed in the track world championships in Stuttgart, qualifying fastest in the individual pursuit, before beating Russia’s Alexei Markov in the first round, setting up a place in the final against Australia’s Luke Roberts. He beat Roberts by 0.736 seconds to win the gold medal, his first senior world title. He also came away with a silver medal in the team pursuit, beaten by Australia in the final, who broke their own world record with a time of three minutes and 57.280 seconds. In September he won stage one of the Tour de l’Avenir, beating teammate Benoît Vaugrenard and Rabobank’s Joost Posthuma by 14 seconds. In November he won the Six Days of Ghent with Matthew Gilmore of Vlaanderen–T Interim.

In a period after the 2004 Olympics, Wiggins started to drink heavily as he struggled to cope with his newfound fame. He stopped when his son Ben was born. “We had a baby. So then it was a case of, ‘well, I’ve got to earn some fucking money’ and the responsibility takes over,” he explained.

At the Olympics he began the defence of his title in the individual pursuit, qualifying with a time of four minutes and 15.031 seconds, breaking his own Olympic record from 2004. In the semi-final he beat Russia’s Alexander Serov, before taking gold in the final against Hayden Roulston of New Zealand, becoming the first rider to defend an Olympic pursuit title successfully. He was a member of the team pursuit that broke the world record in the heats with a time of three minutes and 55.202 seconds. The following day, the team won the gold medal, beating Denmark by 6.7 seconds with another new world record of three minutes and 53.314 seconds, averaging a speed of 61.719 km/h (38.4 mph). He paired with Cavendish in the Madison, and as the reigning world champions, they were favourites for the gold medal, but they only finished ninth. Cavendish felt that Wiggins had not performed to the best of his ability in the Madison.

Wiggins signed with Crédit Agricole for the 2004 season, advised by Boardman, who rode for them his entire professional road career. He began training for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, at first struggling with illness and fitness, he arrived in peak form; he qualified for the individual pursuit with a time of four minutes and 15.165 seconds, an Olympic record and fifth fastest time in history. In the final he beat McGee by over four seconds to win the gold medal. Wiggins was brought in to the team pursuit squad for the first round against France, replacing Bryan Steele, and advanced into the final, where the team were beaten by Australia, settling for the silver medal. Wiggins then partnered Rob Hayles in the Madison. With 90 laps left of the 200, Hayles crashed with Dutchman Robert Slippens, returning after a few laps. They lost a lap to their rivals, but with 30 to go Wiggins attacked, and they regained the lost lap, moving into second place. They lost points in the final sprint, moving them down to third, taking the bronze medal with 12 points, behind Switzerland on 15 and Australia on 22. Wiggins became the first British athlete in 40 years to win three medals at one Games, the last being Mary Rand at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. On 31 December 2004 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2005 New Year Honours, for services to sport.

In early 2005, he revealed his desire to compete in road cycling, and in April won the 16 km (9.9 mi) time trial around the town of Briey in northeastern France, on the second stage of the Circuit de Lorraine. In September he won his first race stage since 2001, stage eight of the Tour de l’Avenir; finishing with teammate Saul Raisin, with third-placed Steve Cummings (Landbouwkrediet–Colnago) coming in three minutes and 24 seconds later. Wiggins competed in the Giro d’Italia, finishing 123rd overall. He came seventh in the time trial at the road world championships in Madrid, one minute and 31 seconds down on winner Michael Rogers of Australia. He moved to Cofidis for the 2006 season, and was selected to ride in the Tour de France, finishing his first Tour in 124th place.

In March 2007, Wiggins returned to the track for the track world championships in Palma, Majorca, his first appearance at the championships since 2004. In the qualifying round for the individual pursuit, he set his second fastest time since his personal best at the Olympics in Athens, with a time of four minutes and 15.976 seconds; he beat Germany’s Robert Bartko in the final to win the gold, catching him after 2750 m. He then went on to win gold in the team pursuit, beating Ukraine in the final. He finished in 13th place in the Madison, with Rob Hayles.

On 16 August, Wiggins joined Cavendish on the track for the first time since the 2008 Olympics, winning the Madison in the first round of the Revolution cycling series at the newly opened Derby Velodrome. In October Wiggins took his first gold medal at the European track championships when he was part of the British squad that won the team pursuit.

For the 2008 season, Wiggins’s focus was on the track and on the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, deciding not to compete in the Tour de France. In February he travelled to the United States to train, and rode the Tour of California, coming second in the prologue, behind Cancellara (Team CSC).

The son of the Australian cyclist Gary Wiggins, Wiggins was born to a British mother in Ghent, Belgium, and raised in London from the age of two. He competed on the track from the early part of his career until 2008. Between 2000 and 2008 he won ten medals at the track world championships, of which six were gold: three in the individual pursuit, two in the team pursuit and one in the madison. His first Olympic medal was a bronze in the team pursuit in Sydney 2000, before winning three medals including the gold in the individual pursuit at the Athens 2004, and two golds in the individual and team pursuit at the Beijing 2008.

Wiggins has written a number of books about his career. The first, entitled In Pursuit of Glory, covers his success as a track cyclist at the Beijing Olympics, where he won two gold medals in the team pursuit and the individual pursuit. It also talks about his triumph at the 2009 Tour de France where he finished in fourth place. In My Time he talks about the setbacks he faced at the 2010 Tour de France. He also talks about the “golden year” of 2012, in which he won the Tour de France and then, just days later, the Olympic individual time trial gold medal in front of a British crowd at the London Olympics. (My Story is the junior edition of My Time.) His fourth book, My Hour, is an account of his attempt on the hour record in 2015, covering the record’s history, his training, and the attempt itself.

Wiggins has written a number of books about his career. The first, entitled In Pursuit of Glory, covers his success as a track cyclist at the Beijing Olympics, where he won two gold medals in the team pursuit and the individual pursuit. It also talks about his triumph at the 2009 Tour de France where he finished in fourth place. In My Time he talks about the setbacks he faced at the 2010 Tour de France. He also talks about the “golden year” of 2012, in which he won the Tour de France and then, just days later, the Olympic individual time trial gold medal in front of a British crowd at the London Olympics. (My Story is the junior edition of My Time.) His fourth book, My Hour, is an account of his attempt on the hour record in 2015, covering the record’s history, his training, and the attempt itself.

Wiggins was awarded a CBE in 2009. Following his success in 2012, Wiggins was the subject of further honours and awards: the Vélo d’Or award for best rider of the year, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award and a knighthood as part of the 2013 New Year Honours.

Wiggins began 2010 as a team leader for the first time and his main target was to win the Tour de France. In February he was part of the team that won the opening team time trial of the Tour of Qatar, before taking second place in the time trial on stage four of the Vuelta a Andalucía, behind Alex Rasmussen of Team Saxo Bank. He then went on to finish third at the Vuelta a Murcia in March, behind winner František Raboň of Team HTC–Columbia and Rabobank rider Denis Menchov in second.

Wiggins had been contracted to ride for Garmin Slipstream again in 2010, but it was announced on 10 December that he was to leave to join Team Sky, having signed a four-year contract with the new British team.

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