The Wiggins streak

As the first British winner of the Tour de France and a gold medalist at London 2012, Bradley Wiggins is a national hero, and though he insists he is an ordinary Kilburn lad he keeps dropping hints about a knighthood. So it is only fitting that, at the age of 32 and with the help of William Fotheringham, he has written My Time (Yellow Jersey Press, £20).

Beneath the dustjacket its covers are the dashing yellow of the maillot jaune, with portraits of our hero front and back and ‘WIGGO’ on the spine, the ‘O’ shaped as a Mod roundel. Inside are more than 40 photographic plates, most of which show him looking pained and moody on bicycles; there is one of him shaving, but only his face, as he sculpts those celebrated sideburns.

There is plenty of material for cycling aficionados, about such races as the Dauphné, the Giro and the Vuelta, and such riders as Christian Knees and Lance Armstrong. Armstrong’s doping strikes Wiggo as ‘shocking still, but not a huge surprise’.

But his story is also of interest to the general reader. We learn that his dad was a hard-drinking Australian bike racer who used amphetamines, sold them to other riders, and knocked Bradley’s mum about. When he left them in 1982, they had to move into his nan and grandad’s flat in Kilburn. His grandad was his only role model, and the old boy’s death in 2010 helped inspire Wiggo to his annus mirabilis.