Bradley Wiggins rules out returning to the Olympics as a rower

Sir Bradley Wiggins has ruled out an attempt to compete as a rower at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Double Olympic rowing champion James Cracknell, who has been coaching the former cyclist, said he believed he was “worth a gamble” for a place in the Team GB squad, but Wiggins says he has too many other commitments.

Wiggins finished 21st on his competitive rowing debut at the British Rowing Indoor Championships and more recently he and his crew made the podium in his first race on water.

However, speaking on Eurosport’s Bradley Wiggins Show, he said: "I'm still training every day, most days, with it. But I've decided that I'm not going for the Olympics because I've got too much other stuff to do.”

He added: "I need to give myself a break. I just haven't got time to train three times a day. To the level I want to do it to it's a full-time job in itself."

The latest edition of the Bradley Wiggins Show focuses on the upcoming world championships and Wiggins believes that Vuelta a Espana winner Simon Yates can emerge victorious, if he “keeps his head on.”

He also said that he thought Chris Froome would be “disappointed” with his season, despite winning the Giro d’Italia and finishing third in the Tour de France – “just because he’s such a winner.”

Wiggins expressed admiration for how his former team-mate had coped with the Salbutamol controversy earlier in the year and said he expected him to be fully focused on winning the Tour in 2019.

“When you think the pressure he was under early season for that whole thing to be cleared up – to win the Giro when that was going on. But his goal was to genuinely win the double, you know; do the Giro and Tour double and he didn’t do that.

“He did amazing to do what he did – win [the Giro] and get third [in the Tour] – but he didn’t do that and I know that he’ll probably now be thinking he wants to win that fifth Tour next year.”