THE BRADLEY WIGGINS SHOW - EPISODE 1

Sir Bradley Wiggins on the death of his former team mate Nico Portal
I rode with Nico in the first year of Team Sky, I also roomed with him quite a bit that year in the early season races. You will never find someone who has a bad word to say about Nico, as a rider he was so well respected by the likes of Valverde and them guys because he rode for Caisse d’Epargne towards the end of his career. He spoke Spanish, perfect French and perfect English. That doesn’t deserve to happen to anyone really, but the content of the personality and character is always brought in to it post death, whether they were a really nice person or not, as it were.

First and foremost, his family, his kids, you have to think about it from their point of view. It was only weeks before that we were talking about the death of Kobe Bryant and the devastation that left behind really. It’s hard for me to put it in to words, personally I had a lot of affection for him, he was someone I spoke to just last year at the Tour, I had my son with me and he couldn’t believe how old Ben had got because the last time he saw him was at the 2012 Tour when we rode up the Champs-Elysees, and we were talking about his children. It’s just a sad moment, not necessarily for cycling, sod cycling, but for his family. First and foremost he was a great husband and father, so our thoughts have to go to them really.

Sir Bradley Wiggins on the Coronavirus outbreak
I spoke to Cav last week and he was just about to travel down to Nice to do some training down there. He’d been training quite hard in preparation for this season, we know how big of a year this was going to be for him, coming back with Bahrain and really wanting to make a point, make a statement. It’s frustrating from an athletic point of view for the likes of Cav, because this was a big, big year for him and of course, we all know what his race is, the Tour de France, coming back this year after not making the squad. So from a personal sporting aspect for someone like Mark Cavendish, it’s going to be a shame if something like this disrupts his opportunity.

It’s the least important thing compared to other things in life, but these guys have put in so much work through the winter in preparation for certain goals that have now been moved, and if something like the Tour de France was to go and the expense of the virus, it would be a great shame for the riders considering the amount of work they have put in. This is their livelihoods, we keep saying it’s only sport, but for these guys, the financial implications for the sponsors and the teams, this could be devastating for them.

The last time we had something like this through cycling, was early 2000’s with foot and mouth, and lots of races started getting cancelled because of the spread of that diasese through farms. I would’ve probably ridden through that. You’d hope the teams would have made those decisions on behalf of the riders, so Mitchelton would have made that decision for the benefit of the riders, the medical team have to make a decision whether to put the riders at risk for the sake of their sponsors, whether they have a team next year, as a rider you’d hope your team would make the right decision.’

It has escalated every day, and it got to a point where they had to cancel the last stage of the Paris-Nice. It did seem odd, that with everything going on at the moment, the crisis in Italy, that we were going very close to there in Nice with a massive bike race almost celebrating that, when it’s getting very serious all around us. There is no toilet roll any more, no paracetemol! You see the Premier League is going and those things, and you think, why did Paris-Nice ever go ahead really, when we’d already lost the Tirreno and some of the teams racing.

Sir Bradley Wiggins on Nairo Quintana performing well at the Paris-Nice
I think he’s taken a lot of stick over the past few years, including from us here. We saw him at the Vuelta last year winning that stage, we thought he was back there but then he was disappointing. You have to question whether his team had anything to do with it, he was probably quite unhappy there towards the end of his reign at Movistar. We all questioned that change when it was announced at the Tour de France, his move to Arkea-Samsic, but he’s paid them sponsors back admirably with that win at the Paris-Nice. He seems like a really nice lad, we spoke to him a couple of times. When Nairo gets the bit between his teeth in a bike race, he’s ruthless.

Episode one of The Bradley Wiggins Show is available to download via iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio and eurosport.co.uk