When your surname is Wiggins and your dad is a Tour de France winner, the pressure on you as a young rider trying to make it in cycling is inevitably going to be raised. But Ben Wiggins, the 19-year-old son of 2012 Tour champion and five-time Olympic gold medallist Sir Bradley Wiggins, is nothing if not confident.
Wiggins, who is on British Cycling’s podium potential programme and rising fast through the ranks, accepts that comparisons with his father are inevitable. But rather than shy away from them, he appears to actively encourage them.
“Definitely,” he replies without hesitation when asked whether he can see himself following in Bradley’s footsteps and competing for cycling’s most famous race at some point. “I don’t want to put any limits on myself. I’m really ambitious. That’s where I want to be. But that’ll be, like, probably 10 years down the line from now.”
Wiggins presents a fascinating character study for a young athlete. His entire life has been shaped by professional sport – both good and bad. As a boy he and his younger sister, Isabella, witnessed the highs first-hand, following their father around the world or watching him on TV – the wins, the adulation. There is a famous picture of Bradley and Ben riding down the Champs-Élysées together on matching yellow Pinarellos following Bradley’s 2012 triumph, the sideburned Bradley wearing the maillot jaune and dark glasses, Ben, like a Mini-Me, smartly dressed in a shirt and chinos and sporting a Team Sky cap. “Yeah, that day was incredible,” Ben says. “All of my earliest memories are of watching dad race.”
He has also seen the lows – plenty of them. His father’s struggle to deal with his overnight celebrity; the bouts of depression; the parliamentary inquiry into doping in sport which included a look at Bradley’s medical exemptions for corticosteroids after they were leaked by Russian hackers in 2016; the collapse of his parents’ marriage in 2020; the revelation a couple of years ago that Bradley had been sexually abused by a coach when he was in his teens; most recently the financial troubles which led to Bradley being declared bankrupt last June.
All of these events impacted on Ben directly. He had to move schools as a young boy due to what Bradley described at the time as “horrendous” bullying following Lance Armstrong’s admission on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2013 that he had doped throughout his career. He witnessed Bradley, in his own words, “smash his Sports Personality of the Year trophy and his knighthood and chuck them in the flower bed”, to make a point to his children about material possessions. He saw his mother, Cath, who has bipolar disorder, go through hell, forced to go into rehab at one stage. In many respects, I suggest, it is a wonder that he wants to sign up for this world given how much pain it has caused him and his family.
Ben, sitting in the track centre at the national velodrome in Manchester, ponders the question. He is understandably reluctant to discuss specific instances, but insists the experience as a whole made him tougher and has certainly not put him off performing on the biggest stage.
“I was only young,” he says of his father’s initial launch to superstardom and the craziness that followed. “Had I been a bit older, maybe it would have affected me differently. But when you’re seven years old, you just kind of take it in your stride. I kind of saw it at the time as, ‘Oh, cool. We’ve got people camping outside our house’ you know?
“It’s not really something that I’ve taken with me through my life, to be honest. If anything it’s helped me. Because I’ve gone and performed on the world stage now. And I’ve not found it [too daunting]. I think some other young riders would find it difficult, whereas… it was nothing new to me really. So yeah, as far as performing on the big stage, that’s when I feel I’m at my best. When the lights are shining brightest.”
Wiggins smiles. Physically, there is a lot of both of his parents in him. He is slightly shorter than his father, at 6ft, and maybe a bit stockier than he was at the same age. But he is still growing into his body.
They certainly share many of the same characteristics as riders. A strong time-triallist and track endurance rider – Ben took silver in the junior world road championships in Glasgow in 2023 and gold in the Madison at the junior track worlds that same year – he says he wants to continue on the track for “at least the next few years”, with Los Angeles 2028 in mind, while developing on the road.
Wiggins currently races for Hagens Berman Jayco, a development team run by Axel Merckx, who if anything has an even more famous surname than Wiggins, being the son of the most successful rider of all time, Belgian great Eddy Merckx.
Wiggins admits his team leader’s parentage was a big factor in him joining. “That was probably the main reason I signed for him,” he says. “He had it [growing up in the shadow of a famous parent] on probably even more of a bigger scale than I did. So to have his guidance… yeah, he has my best interests at heart. And Axel was an amazing rider in his own right.”
It is still very early days but Wiggins looks like an excellent prospect. He says he plans to race the classics at under-23 level this year – Paris-Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, Ghent-Wevelgem – while going for wins from breakaways in stage races and “gradually improving his climbing”.
“There’s definitely a blueprint for me making it to grand tours in the long term, whether it’s my dad or guys like G (Geraint Thomas), strong track and TT (time trial) specialists who went on to contend for general classifications in grand tours. But that’s not really my focus at the minute. We’re talking much further down the line.”
Maybe. But Wiggins is not hanging about. When we speak he is just back from a training camp in Girona. Wiggins has a base out there, dividing his time between Spain and his mother’s house in the North West – a big Liverpool fan, he has a season ticket at Anfield. Wiggins discloses he held some “interesting talks” while in Spain regarding next season.
“I think I’m developing in a way to move to WorldTour [the top level of professional cycling] next year,” he says. “But if it doesn’t happen straight away that’s fine.” Any idea who he would sign for? “Well, I stagiaired (rode as an apprentice) for [Australian WorldTour team] Jayco-AlUla last year and that was really good. So going there would be my first choice, I’d say at this point. But we’ll see how I progress this year. I could win 10 races and have my choice of anywhere. But certainly the support they’ve shown me early in my career, I’ll definitely be giving them first dibs.”
Again, the confidence and ambition shine through, although not in an arrogant way. Sir Mark Cavendish told The Telegraph in an interview before Christmas that Wiggins was a “good kid” with his head screwed on. He will need that if he is to navigate his way through the professional ranks and reach his stated goals. But he is adamant he can do so with hard work, and makes no apology for being so ambitious.
“I wouldn’t be doing anything in my life without wanting to be the best at it,” he insists. “I definitely got that from him [his father]. I played a lot of different sports growing up, and I’d be the same if I was still playing rugby now. I’d want to be the best, playing for England and winning trophies in a different sport.
“Your foundations are built at an early age, aren’t they?” he says. “Seeing my dad’s drive and what he put himself through every day to be the best he could be. The discipline. Doing it on the days you don’t want to do it. As sad as some people might think it is, I see this as my job. I don’t necessarily enjoy it every day. There are days I do, but there are probably more days I don’t enjoy it than I do enjoy. But those are the days we train for.”
‘I’m not chasing fame or money – I’m chasing success’
I ask about the tattoos on his hands. His fondness for them is another trait he shares with his father. He points to a small boomerang on his left hand – a nod, he says, to his Australian heritage. Ben’s grandfather, Gary, who was a successful cyclist in the Seventies and Eighties before going off the rails with drink and drugs, and died in tragic circumstances, hailed from a small mining town in Victoria. On the right hand, he has a butterfly and a swallow similar to those on his dad’s arm. “I don’t know, my dad likes butterflies,” he explains, smiling. “And the swallow, I got that one after I was in a car crash. It’s kind of a safety thing. Swallows always return home, you know?”
It is touching to hear him speak so tenderly about his family. While he politely declines to discuss his father’s personal circumstances at the moment, he is clearly hugely protective of both his parents and his sister, who has just turned 18, as well his half-sister through a more recent relationship on Bradley’s part.
“What I will say is when everything came out in the autumn [about his father’s bankruptcy], yeah, that was kind of the beginning of his resurgence I guess,” Wiggins reflects. “Because I think his fear was what people were going to say about it. And actually the general reaction was really supportive. I think it’s pretty evident that they [the financial issues] were not of his doing. He was poorly advised. But yeah, we speak all the time. And he’s doing super good. I’m very proud of him.”
The feeling is clearly mutual. Bradley told The High Performance Podcast last year (listen below) how proud he was of his son, crediting Ben with intervening and helping to save him when he was in a “very dark place”.
One can only wish the younger Wiggins well as he makes his way through cycling. The potential pitfalls are painfully present, but Ben is not afraid.
“We all went through this journey together,” he says of his family. “But we all love each other and we’re all extremely close. I think, if anything, it’s taught me what to do differently, and how to manage it. I mean, no one prepares you for that level of success. But I’m incredibly lucky that I kind of feel like I would be prepared. But I’m not chasing fame, I’m not chasing money, I’m chasing success. They’re things that come with it, aren’t they? I’ll deal with them if and when I make it.”
