Sir Bradley Wiggins has said that he does not want his son Ben – now aged 14 – to become a pro cyclist, despite the teenager recently coming within a whisker of winning the North West Youth and Junior Tour in August.
Mail Online reports that the five-time Olympic gold medallist and 2012 Tour de France winner, who described his son as “very talented,” made the comment as the national tour of his one-man show drew to a close last week in London.
“I'm not going to push him into that now so I can stand there in 10 years' time when he wins Olympic gold and the reflected glory – ‘That's my son’,” Wiggins said.
"I can't do that, it's cruel,'” he added.
Anyone who has followed Wiggins' career will know that he is a complicated character, and that much of that has to do with his father Gary, who enjoyed a lot of success on the six-day circuit, abandoning the two-year-old Bradley and his mother, which led to them moving from Belgium to London.
Had that not happened, would the 'Kid from Kilburn' have gone on to become a multiple wporld and Olympic champion on the track, and enjoyed so much success on the road?
Wiggins also spoke to The Sunday Times about his home, and his collection of cycling memorabilia.
“I’ve probably got one of the biggest, rarest collections of cycling memorabilia in the world,” he said. “It’s race jerseys, mainly, from the biggest names in the sport.
“At one time, jerseys weren’t like they are today, they were wool with advertising stitched on by hand. To me, they are works of art.
“My most treasured is my Sean Yates yellow jersey. I associate it with being 14 and wanting to do what I got to do for a living.
“Sean and I have become close – he’s an inspiration, and when I won the Tour he was my directeur sportif,” he added.
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34 comments
The driver has a responsibility for all of their doors being opened in a proper and legal manner, so as not to hurt others. And it is not really the done thing to allow children to get out into traffic, is it? Being hit by large motor vehicles does tend to hurt and can result in some rather severe injuries.
And I will say again, the Dutch reach should not be promoted as a way to keep cyclists safe, it should be to keep the car user and their vehicle safe, they care about their own safety and their precious vehicle, many do not care one fig about cyclists.
So yeah, in my "why aren't you using the cycle lane" box ... the answer is, "because someone's decided to fully park up blocking the whole lane and pavement with their car and trailer. Uh huh. No way I'm trying to squeeze past that with my son on tag-along behind me, so we have to join the main road instead.
How about "why aren't you using the car lane?"
Did they check the wheelie bins under the railing for theose missing wheels of the art work in Bristol.
Wouldn't be suprised if they went in there overnight as cable ties can be cut very easily with a pair of scissors.
Now - if they had been car wheels.... thats a different story.
Perhaps it was the council's street scene graffiti squad that removed the wheels.
Seems more likely to be error than theft. It's not a gold toilet.
My thoughts exactly. The right hands of many councils often don't seem to know what their left hands are doing, so...
She probably missed the sign warning that cycles attached to the railings will be removed.
OK, you win!
Could be !
Once the public sector can be involved, it's nearly always cockuo rather than conspiracy.
Eddy Merckx was wearing a pacemaker, but so far nobody has stated whether a helmet was worn.
That's not the biggest sailing race. Not even close.
Erm... So, cyclo-cross is fun, is it?
More road signs.. brilliant
I don't think we should be complaining that the sign is there - but should be complaining that there is a need for it in the first place. There does seem to be a general acceptance that the standard of driving in this (and a lot of other) country/ies is shite and that we as a society find it easier to warn against the idiots in motor vehicles than actually tackle bad driving practice. It's as if the authorities have thrown their collective hands in the air and claimed they can't/won't do anything about bad driving, so every other road user needs to mitigate their behaviour instead.
All that sign in the photo is missing is the word 'idiots' between 'of' and 'opening'.
Get well soon Eddy.
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, in a parallel universe, there was a land where everybody was perfect. And they all lived happily ever after.
Meanwhile, in the real world...
Meanwhile in the real world, there are other options other than complete moral perfection of everyone, and everything being exactly as it is forever with no change or alternative ever possible.
It's funny though that the meaning of that sign depends on whether 'opening' is meant as an adjective or a verb. Bloody English language, constantly introducing ambiguities.
It's not about perfection though, it's about recognising that driving standards are pretty low and something needs to occur to improve them. As an example, I've just got home after a close pass in a 30 where the driver was speeding and there was no one coming the other way.
It we could recognise that a car has 4 doors, one of which is used by the driver and others are used predominantly by children. But sure make children responsible for your safety because they have a legal obligation.
People are reading far too much into a bloody sign. It's there to warn you that parked cars will open their doors, stop getting upset.
The sign is obviously there for the benefit of everybody, cyclists and drivers/pasengers. It reminds vehicle occupants of their responsibilities and it reminds cyclists of the danger. Some people DO open car doors carelessly and dangerously, some cyclists DO ride into carelessly/dangerously opened car doors. A sign reminding both sets of people of the danger is a GOOD THING*.
Some cyclists really are touchy.
* © Sellar & Yeatman
It's not a bad sign per se, but it should be displayed prominently inside the motor vehicle, maybe somewhere near the door handle.
Looks very pragmatic dual use of the sign post, deter cycling in the door zone by putting a post in the way, then pop a sign on the post to say why they did it...
A much nicer approach could have been to put a lightly textured strip along the part of the pat next to the cars so that bike rides unconsciously chose to ride on the smooth tarmac away from the cars.
Oh, and some signs at car occupant eye height facing the cars would also help. It'd generate discussion and increase awareness of the problem of dooring. They could even suggest the opposite hand technique for opening doors.
Glasgow City Council have done the lightly textured strip approach. But they did it on a road with double yellows that never has any parked cars.
They've used exactly the same material on the new bike lane on Sauchiehall At. It seems to imply that cyclists are supposed to cycle on the narrow textured strip beside the road. Either that or they've deliberately chosen a bike unfriendly surface for their new bike lane. Weird.
To me the sign suggests there's been an incident with a cyclist getting doored and the council have put up a warning sign so nobody can claim compensation because of poor infrastructure if it happens again.
Maybe I'm cynical.
To clarify, the sign in my photo is on a shared use path. The same objective would be met with a rewording of the sign, aiming it at those with the legal obligation. Otrherwise we propogate the continual myth that everyone should jsut get out of a driver's way.
Well, at least they have come up with an arrangement where the cars must park in the road traffic lane and not in the cycle/shared use lane. That's worth some praise. It does present a door-opening hazard, which they have done their best to mitigate with the dashed line. Given that car passengers exiting on the pavement side are far less likely to be as circumspect as when they exit road side, children especially, is it wrong to highlight this residual risk to vulnerable cyclists and pushchair pushers?
They haven't really mitigated it, though, have they? They've introduced it, by putting the parking on that side of the road rather than the other. Alternatively, by putting the 'shared use' on that side.
You missed a bit. I've highlighted it in bold for you. By the way, cars have doors both sides.
I think the point that was trying to be made was that if the shared use path was on one side of the road and the parking was only allowed on the other side, then it wouldn't matter how many doors the cars had, they wouldn't be able to car door a cyclist at least.
You know what, I hadn't even noticed the dashed line until you mentioned it.
It seems to me that line marks out an area a lot less than the width of a car door, and I would venture that the occupants of a car are more likely, not less, to just fling the door open to its full width if they're exiting onto - as they see it - a pavement (ie. not the roadway).
FWIW I'm sure they mean well, but it's still victim blaming
There have been similar warning just outside Chepstow (on one of the few genuinely useful shared pavements) for a decade at least.
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