My Time By Bradley Wiggins
Sportsbookofthemonth.com price: £9.00, saving £11.00 on rrp
Criticised in some quarters for making an ‘inappropriate gesture’ towards photographers camped outside of his home last week following his return from hospital, Bradley Wiggins must have allowed himself a wry smile when he heard his wife’s response.
Mrs Wiggins defended her husband, saying he could hardly be expected to respond with a ‘Keats recital’ when the photographers were preventing him from getting into is home.
Actually, it would have been fantastic had our favourite Londoner responded to frantic cries of ‘Bradley, Bradley!’ by quoting a line from Keats’ Odes to May:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Imagine how his popularity would have soared to even greater heights had the sideburned one left the paps dumfounded by delivering that.
He doesn’t need to, of course, and while his autobiography My Time is hardly comparable to anything Keats wrote, it bounds along at a cracking pace worthy of a Tour de France time trial.
To say Bradley Wiggins has had a great year is akin to suggesting that Lionel Messi is a decent footballer. It wasn’t just the Tour de France and Olympic gold that Wiggins won within ten days of each other. He also racked up victories in the Paris-Nice, the Tour of Romandie in Switzerland and the Criterium du Dauphine.
But it’s the Tour and his gold medal that most people will remember. The first Briton to win cycling’s greatest race, swiftly followed by success at London 2012 which made him his country’s most decorated Olympian.
However, this inherently modest, decent man declares that he struggles “with the idea that I may have turned into a role model overnight".
Outside of his sporting environment, he maintains, “I’m as normal as everyone else. I’m not perfect. I make mistakes ... It’s the same with most celebrities in this country: porcelain gods that shatter when they fall.”
On reflection then, it’s probably just as well that Wiggins didn’t recite a few lines from Hyperion or Ode to a Grecian Urn to those photographers last week. If there’s one thing Brits do not like, it’s a show-off and, as this book reveals time and again, that’s not Bradley’s style – which is why he’s the odds-on favourite to be named BBC Sports Personality of the Year next month and why this book is likely to become the biggest-selling sports book of all time.
We’ve teamed up with Sports Book of the Month & have a signed copy of My Time to give away.
To win this week’s sports book, go to their website (www.sportsbookofthemonth.com) and answer the following question:
In which city did the 2012 Tour de France begin?
