By Martyn Herman
GLASGOW (Reuters) – Ben Wiggins has a much to live up to being the son of a British cycling icon but so far the 18-year-old is making a pretty good fist of following his father’s wheel.
The son of Bradley, Britain’s first Tour de France winner and five-time Olympic champion on track and road, is already making progress and will contest this week’s junior road time trial at the UCI World Championships in Scotland.
Wiggins Jnr was also involved in the junior road race last weekend, although it was not his happiest experience, pulling out before the end after getting caught up in a crash, dropping his chain and losing too much ground.
For a rider whose main focus has been as an endurance track rider so far in his career, Friday’s time trial offers him more of an opportunity to challenge for a medal.
Bradley, 43, has been in Glasgow supporting his boy, although Ben says there is not much technical input.
“Nothing really. There’s not much advice he can really give you. If you think about it, it’s 25 years since he rode a junior race himself and the sport has changed so much,” he said.
“It’s more just having his presence rather than any advice.”
Wiggins races on the road for the Fensham Howes Junior team managed by the father of Ineos Grenadiers rider and Olympic mountain bike champion Tom Pidcock.
He has twice finished second in the British junior road time trial championship and won the Trophee Morbihan Juniors stage race this year and was seventh in the Tour de Gironde.
Last year on the track he won the points race at the European Junior championships.
He admits that the Wiggins name can weigh on his shoulders, but he is now forging ahead and making a name for himself and has his sights on making the Los Angeles Olympics team in 2028.
“I think it’s more difficult to manage when it’s not going so well. Say you’ve had a few bad races or whatever – it starts, I don’t know if it’s just in my own head, but you start to think about what people are thinking or saying,” he said.
“People are always going to compare me to him but actually if you look at my junior results compared to when he was a junior I’m actually a lot better than he was.
“I remind him of that all the time.”
Once he is finished in Scotland, the focus will return to the track, the discipline in which his father made his name, winning golds in the individual pursuit in Athens and Beijing and team pursuit in Beijing and Rio de Janeiro.
“We’ve got the (junior) track worlds at the end of this month. I’m more prepared for that really than a road race,” Wiggins said.
“In the past couple of months I’ve been preparing for the track really and sort of playing catch-up the last couple of weeks on the road.”
(Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Ken Ferris)
