Sir Bradley Wiggins on the current Coronavirus situation in the UK
Well, it’s whatever you make of it really, everyone is moaning about toilet roll and queueing up at Waitrose, if that’s the worse thing you’ve got to worry about then you are doing well aren’t you. I’ve always been quite active in homeless charities and a lot of the soup kitchens have shut due to the virus because they’re obviously voluntary roles and people can’t come in to work. So just simple things really, whatever meal I make, just take some out and try and help one or two people, there is always someone very close by who is suffering just as much as the rest of us. We should all try and help each other during this period, you always try and think of your own position but there is always someone worse off. Everyone gets panicked in these times, it’s like the supermarkets, everybody is queuing up at five in the morning because they are panicked due to the lack of information. This is how society works, people panic, panic buy, people don’t pull together really, it’s a crazy time.

There is no end in sight at the moment, we don’t know when the season is going to pick-up again, at this rate I cannot see the Tour de France going ahead. What are riders training for? The World Championships at the end of the year? Riders have to make it up as they go along, especially as they are at home with the wife and kids, this has become bigger than cycling, it’s a matter of life and death, it’s as stark as that and you have to take precautions. The team will be in communication with the riders at every point, it’s unprecedented. It’s alright doing 300km on the turbo but you can’t do that once a week for half the year.

Sir Bradley Wiggins on Chris Froome and Tom Dumoulin returning from injury
Someone like Chris Froome is the master of training, so he has got the mental to train for this long, so the current situation will suit someone like Chris. Some riders needs that racing to get back in to it after long layoffs, like Tom Dumoulin, he will be chewing at the bit to get in to racing at some point. For me, I’d always look at the bigger picture, things like that are easier to do when you have got a return date set.

When I crashed out of the Tour de France in 2011, within an hour, we had decided that I was going to for the Vuelta, so we knew we had six weeks. That’s your motivation, whenever you’re sat on the turbo for 100km, you know why you are doing it and you know you’re not going to have to do it forever, but with this, you know there is no end date in sight so you may have to do this weekly for 3/4/5 months and that’s quite hard. I always found things like that easier to do when you had a target in sight, with this, they don’t have that. I think I would have used the time to do other things, I don’t think your team can hammer you when there is no end date, all bets are off. Imagine riders that are in the last year of their contract, going in to next year and this year was really important for them. Cav, this was a massive year for him.

Sir Bradley Wiggins on Mark Cavendish and his start to the 2020 season
We might not see it from Cavendish now, he’s the type of guy that needs a load of racing under him at the start of a season. I think Cav is mentally strong, but it’s a different type of mental strength, Cav needs the characters around him, he’s not the type of rider to do what Froomey will be doing five hour rides, three 30 minute blocks at a certain power, a certain RPM, whereas Cav would rather be out on the motorway, smashing it in the rain.

I have spoke to him a few times, the only thing he is really disappointed about at the moment is that he hasn’t been selected for the Olympic Games and he feels that quite heavily, he qualified for the spot and somehow they’ve worked in to a position where they haven’t picked him. I would have sent him to Tokyo because he’s tried and tested and when you speak about having big players at the Olympic Games, Cav would have been the team captain of that squad, can you imagine some of those younger riders, just having him around would have benefitted them so much.

It’s like in 2012, when they were arguing about whether to send David Beckham to the Olympics or to the World Cup, sometimes a presence is enough, and to have someone like Cav around would have been invaluable to the whole squad, just having Cav in those apartments, it shouldn’t be underestimated, it’s Mark Cavendish, one of the biggest names in cycling. He’s pretty p*ssed off about it, he always feels like he’s got something to prove and he feels like he’s been fighting the tide since he’s started with British Cycling, feels like he’s got something to prove, that he’s not a natural selection like me, where they would twist certain parameters or rules to include me, he’s always felt that he’s never had that benefit, that he’s always had to come in the hard way. He’s always put it down to the fact that the team pursuit are given priority, and I think there’s an element of truth to that.

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