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Bradley Wiggins
has said he was so focused on the London Olympic TT in 2012 that when he saw
his mother and his children at a café walking to the start he had to ignore
them.
In an interview
with Eurosport, done as part of a series looking back at the 2012 Games, he
also says he feels like a different person now and he feels sorry for the
person he was eight years ago at that moment.
When he was
sitting on the victor’s throne after the TT, just a week after winning the Tour
de France, he put his fingers up in a V-sign out of insecurity and awkwardness.
“I walked
past this little café and I saw my mum outside, and my kids were inside the
café, and they came running out and I couldn’t, I didn’t want to see or look at
them because I would have started crying I think,” he said of walking to the
warm-up zone for the TT, which he won.
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“I thought 'they are going to be there in an hours time',
but it was the cruelest act to not say hello to them, but I had to stay so
focused and not let any emotion come in at any point.
“That’s the cruelty of elite sport, you have to give up your happiness to be so good at something, to ignore your kids when they’re that young, not knowing why dad didn’t say hello, that’s quite hard to look back at. Most elite sports people can resonate with that."
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When he finished the TT he said he only came out of the Tour de France bubble and the moment was so good he felt life could never get any better.
"I look back and I know I am not that person anymore; I know who he was and I feel sorry for him,” he tells Eurosport of himself at the time and the need to perform to the cameras when he won.
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"That was me
and my insecure, introvertness sat on a throne with a bank of
photographers in front of me not knowing what to do, so I just did that; I did
that from school days, performed. I can’t really look at pictures of that now.
"As focused and amazing as he was on a bike, that
athlete, off the bike there was this insecurity and I didn’t know how to react
socially.
“I realise
why I was like that now, growing up, having everything done for you, not really
having much of a childhood, that’s why I was like that. People think it’s just
you being cool, but it was actually done in that introvert-ness and that
shyness.”
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