Wiggins on taking the yellow jersey for the first time:

"I knew what I had on my shoulders and it was f****** great, and I didn’t take it for granted for one minute. When I took it, I remember watching Boardman take it in 1994, watching Sean Yates take it in 1994, I knew what I had on my shoulders and I felt like I was part of something very, very special. Even if I had lost it the following day, I could have always said that I’d held the yellow jersey at the Tour de France, it was that big to me, and it was that special. I relished the moment, I had moments to myself in the hotel that evening where I laid it on my chair, reminding myself and reflecting about the s*** I went through growing up on a council estate, getting battered by my step-father and all these things, I came from Kilburn and I am now wearing the yellow jersey 19 years on. I still think about that to this day, not in disbelief, but the importance of it. When I was a kid, maybe wrongly, but I imagined all my heroes like Indurain and Pantani, I thought you had to come from warmer climates, you had to come from a culture of cycling, from a family that celebrated your success, I came from a dysfunctional family that lived on a council estate in Kilburn, a father that had left  home and went on to get murdered, but I won the yellow jersey at the Tour de France. I still haven’t got my head around the enormity of it. 

"The adversity caused the drive, without adversity there is no progression, ease is the biggest threat to progression and that’s true of any walk of life, not just mine, a lot of people grow up with adversity worse than mine. It’s what makes you stronger, it’s what life is about. I am quite fortunate, I have suffered bouts with mental health like bi-polar, but I am not prone to it and I am very grateful for that, because I have witnessed it first hand because it is a cruel illness that affects so many people that go undiagnosed and had devastating effects on peoples lives, including their own and they get ostracised by society without knowing why."

Wiggins on whether the yellow jersey changed his life:

"It was a life changing moment without realising it at the time, because it was a lifetime ambition but I somehow thought that I could always do it, and I don’t know whether that was youthful delusion and wanted to believe that, but it gave me some sort of hope and something to work towards. My old art teacher was an old hag of a woman, and I was messing around in one of her classes and she kept me back after the class and asked me what I was going to do with my life, told me I couldn’t keep messing around in class. I told her that I wanted to wear the yellow jersey at the Tour de France and win an Olympic gold, I actually said that, I don’t just say it now because it sounds good and she laughed and asked what I really wanted to do."

Wiggins on supporting his countrymen during the Tour de France

"I did it was Tao [Geoghan Hart] and Geraint [Thomas], you just get to a point where you really enjoy people you know do well. Even Adam [Yates] at the moment, it’s lovely to see because you know what that feels like, it’s just sport and it feels bigger than it is when you do it, but when people break your records, like Campenaerts with the Hour Record, people think you’d be annoyed they break your records but it’s great, you want the sport to progress and move on, you want people to win races because that’s how you did it. It’s reflective on how you are on your own life, because if you’re bitter and twisted making you want others to not do well, that’s quite sad for me."

Wiggins on whether Adam Yates would have enjoyed his first day in yellow:

"I don’t know with Adam, him and his brother, I always sing their praises because I think part of the reason they are so good, other than the fact they’re world class athletes, they are grounded and they come from a good family. They are just down to earth, northern lads that work really hard and are just polite. The way he took the yellow jersey was a bit different, it was probably a bit underwhelming for him. I noticed he rode with just the jersey, black helmet, black shorts, no yellow tape or decoration, there was no celebration of having that jersey. Is that purposely done by Mitchelton-Scott? Most teams take the yellow cape, the yellow gloves for someone. Have they got it? Is it kind of a way of forgetting you’ve got the yellow jersey so you ride the same as you would without it? Maybe it is. Some riders would wear the lot, they might only have it for one day so they want to show it off, but Adam might be making a point at how underwhelming it is, the way he took it, it’s almost as if he’s done it purposely to deflect the fact he has it, so he keeps racing in his way. He doesn’t want to start riding defensively because he’s an attacking rider, that’s the type of thing Whitey [Matt White] would do, which is a hard thing to do but a genius thing to do when you think about it."

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