Wiggins walks the line

Ben Wiggins makes his Track Nationals debut as dad Sir Brad plays mentor from track centre

- Simon Richardson

Not many junior riders at the recent track National Championships had international photography agencies pointing their lenses at them as they took their first tentative steps in national-level competition. But not many junior riders were being walked through their individual pursuit rides by multiple Olympic and world champion Sir Bradley Wiggins. Although Ben Wiggins probably just calls him ‘dad’.

“I actually f****d up walking the line,” Wiggins admits, laughing at his first failure as a track coach. “I was using my Nokia phone, and I pushed the button at the wrong time. So although it looked like I was walking the line, I was actually just making it up.”

Wiggins junior clocked a four-minute, 29-second ride and didn’t make it through to the next round, but at just 16 years of age (he has since turned 17) it was a solid first foray into senior competition.

While 2022 is Ben Wiggins’s first ‘proper’ season of racing, he is no newcomer to the pressure-cooker environment around elite sport, and even those long lenses pointing in his direction. In 2008, he played on the podium in the middle of Manchester velodrome wearing the IP world champion’s jersey and medal his father had just won as the British team swept all before them in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.