Ten years have passed since Bradley Wiggins won the 2012 Tour de France, but the British rider is reluctant to overtly celebrate the momentous occasion. I've never really thought too much about it, to be honest," he said. To be honest, I haven't really thought too much about it. It's not something I think about every anniversary," Wiggins said in a telephone conference call Thursday. I'm just amazed that 10 years have passed. It happened so fast, and so much has happened in that time."

When journalists from all over Europe first joined the conference call, designed to promote Wiggins' current work as an analyst for Eurosport, they were told by the PR assistant on hand that he would not answer questions about anything other than this year's Tour de France. They were simply told that they would not be answering questions about anything other than this year's Tour de France.

Shortly thereafter, however, Wiggins confessed that he had not seen the route except for the first few stages, and then suggested that he had not been paying particular attention to news of team selection either.

At one point, the call risked plunging into the kind of inorganic territory that Pele portrayed when, as a corporate ambassador, he told the international press that his country was an outsider to win the World Cup. Wiggins dutifully toured Europe, answering questions about Jonas Wingegaard, Beulah Hansgrohe, and what you yourself eat.

Fortunately, Wiggins was willing to ignore his PR rep's injunction to "stay true to the modern era," and shared his feelings about the upcoming anniversary and the 2012 Tour de France itself. He was not willing to do so, as he left the team in mid-2015 after it was deemed unable to meet Sky's demands for the next two years.

In the summer of 2012, Wiggins won gold in his home country at the London Olympics, less than 10 days after riding down the Champs-Elysées Boulevard in yellow. For better or worse, Wiggins' life was never the same again.

At the time, Wiggins was feted as a national hero, but public perception of him and the achievements of British cycling in that era was not as good as the scandals that later surfaced, particularly the Fancy Bears hack that revealed the TUE of Triamcinolone and former Team Sky doctor, Richard Freeman, were colored by the Medical Tribunal against his medical practices.

Meanwhile, Wiggins himself once half-jokingly suggested in his final months with Team Sky that winning Paris-Roubaix would be a greater achievement than winning the Tour. He jokingly said that winning Paris-Roubaix would be a greater achievement than winning the Tour.

Ten years later, what does the 2012 achievement have to do with the present?

"It's good. I'm very proud: I'm coming to terms with them and accepting them. They're part of my life. I was a different person in 2012. What I'm trying to convey now is that the mindset you have to adopt as an elite athlete is very different from normal life. I realize that now.

"The mindset of an elite athlete is very abnormal and not healthy. I am so far removed from that now. The sad part is that if I had stayed in that mindset, I would be in a very bad place right now. That's why I'm able to achieve greatness. At the expense of everything else."

Wiggins had an uneasy coexistence with Chris Froome during the 2012 Tour. As the race left the Pyrenees and headed to Paris, Wiggins relaxed a bit, but dismissed the notion that he did not enjoy the experience of wearing the maillot jaune.

Wiggins said of his attitude during the race, "I think it was kind of a deflection tactic because of the media buzz. But I loved every moment in the yellow jersey. More gentlemanly, less swearing, more appreciative of those around me. But I can't explain who I was when I got off the bike.

Some of his teammates from that time, Wiggins, are still in the peloton 10 years later. Mark Cavendish won three stages in 2012 with the Sky team that was formed around Wiggins' yellow jersey challenge, but this year he will likely not be selected for Quick-Step Alfa Vinyl and will miss the chance to achieve his record 35th Tour win, and He is likely to miss out on the chance to record his 35th Tour victory.

"Patrick [Lefebvre] knows what he's doing, but from a personal standpoint, it's a real shame Cav is not here," Wiggins said.

"It's crazy that another team wouldn't take Cav, who just won a stage of the Giro. [Aside from my personal relationship with him, I don't see why we wouldn't get Mark. Not just from a performance standpoint, not just for the sponsors, not just for the impact he has on the rest of the team, but for the fact that he won four stages and the green jersey last year. Why not take a rider who won the defending green jersey back to the Tour de France?

Wiggins' nemesis, Froome, has been confirmed as a member of Israeli Premier Tech, albeit not anywhere near his former form in the aftermath of his career-threatening crash at the 2019 Dauphiné. Wiggins said, "He might surprise us, maybe not GC, but it would be nice to see him break through and win a stage," and he backed his former teammate Geraint Thomas as leader of the Ineos Grenadiers in the wake of his Tour de Suisse victory

"I'm very proud of him.

"I may not have the same physical attributes as when I won the Tour a few years ago, but winning the Tour de Suisse was incredible. I'm definitely in contention for the podium," Wiggins said. If we get into a situation where there's a little bit of a game between the UAE and Jumbo Visma, he could make his move and surprise everyone."

But it is Slovenians Primoš Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) and Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates) who should be beaten. Wiggins observed Pogachar up close from his bike during the race this season and found it hard to imagine how he would have moved to beat this Tour champion if he had been in the peloton 10 years ago.

"It's hard to answer that, because when I compare 10 years ago to now, it's a world apart and I can't imagine doing it again. I'm in awe of him and I'm so detached from that time that I can't answer that question with any sincerity."

"I would, of course, automatically think that there is no way I can beat him. But to say that would be a betrayal of who I used to be, and I don't know what I would have said or how I would have handled it if I were Wiggo in 2012. That's one of the downsides of being so close to this sport on a motorcycle now. I'm so in awe of what they do that I can't imagine myself doing something like that.

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