Sir Bradley Wiggins admits he won’t push his ‘very talented’ son, 14, into a ‘brutal’ cycling career

Sir Bradley Wiggins has revealed he won’t be pushing his ‘very talented’ son into becoming a professional cyclist – claiming that doing so to bask in the reflected glory would be ‘cruel’. 

The 2012 Tour de France winner, born in Kilburn, north London, said he doesn’t get involved in 14-year-old Ben’s training.

Sir Bradley, 39, whose own father was a cycling champion, revealed that the teenager recently came within half a second of winning the North West Youth and Junior Tour in August – but he’d told him he didn’t care if he finished ‘first or last’. 

Speaking on the last night of his national roadshow in London, he explained: ‘I’m not going to push him into that now so I can stand there in 10 years’ time when he wins Olympic gold and the reflected glory – “That’s my son.” I can’t do that, it’s cruel,’ adding that someone else coaches him. 

In a recent interview with the Sunday Times Home, the proud father said Ben is ‘mad for cycling’ and is ‘getting good results’, while his daughter Bella, 12, is ‘talented and could be very good if she wanted to be’.

‘It’s hard growing up with a famous father,’ he added. ‘I don’t want them to be judged or feel they have to do what I did.’ 

During the roadshow, Sir Bradley admitted his years racing on the road with Team Sky were ‘the most unhappy’ of his career.

‘There was no enjoyment. It was a brutal elite sport,’ he said.

In August it was reported the sportsman is taking a degree in social work as he looks to redefine himself. 

‘I don’t give a s*** about my cycling career now,’ he told The Big Issue magazine. ‘I’m just detached from it, I don’t want to live off the back of it. 

Sir Bradley was the BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2012, with his Tour success helping transform the popularity of cycling and his pose on a throne in front of Hampton Court Palace after his Olympic gold becoming one of the defining images of the London Games – as were his late-night celebrations. 

Having moved to Manchester in 1999 to be nearer the city’s velodrome, he and wife Cath now live in a 1970s barn conversion in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty – the Trough of Bowland, north of Preston. 

Sir Bradley told how the couple enjoy watching First Dates and no longer throw wild  parties as he doesn’t like people in his house and now treasures his ‘personal space’.

In the interview with Sunday Times Home, he also admitted to keeping his Olympic medals ‘in a Co-op bag in the drawer’.

‘All my jerseys are in boxes for the kids when they get older,’ he added. ‘If they don’t want them, they can chuck them in a skip.’

Sir Bradley, who briefly attempted to become an elite rower after his cycling career ended, has now found success as a pundit for Eurosport, and during this year’s Tour he drew rave reviews for his commentary when riding on a motorbike, laughing and joking with riders in the peloton.