After Bradley Wiggins gave British cycling fans (read: roughly the whole nation) the thrill of their sporting year by winning the Tour de France and then taking gold at the Olympics a couple weeks later, most hoped the newly knighted Sir would go on to continue dominating the sport in 2013.
But a knee injury and a recent illness has derailed Wiggins’s 2013 Tour de France title defense before it began, and now the famous road cyclist has told Britain’s Sky TV that he doesn’t know if he’s willing to put in the training for another Tour.
“For me it was always about winning the Tour,” the seven-time Olympic medalist explained Friday. “I’ve done that. If I’m honest I don’t think I’m prepared to make those sacrifices again that I made last year, with my family and so on. I’ve achieved what I’ve achieved. I’m incredibly happy with that.
“If I do anything else after this it will be stuff I want to do, stuff that I’m willing to train hard and sacrifice for really. For me it was always about winning the Tour, that was a huge thing for me, a huge journey; I’ve been doing that four years. I don’t know if I’d want to go through all that again to be honest. I’ve always had other goals and there are other things I’d like to try and do.”
Despite the injury, Wiggins is already back on his bike training for the Tour of Poland, the Tour of Britain, and the world championships in Florence, Italy while he continues to get treatments on his knee.
