After a disappointing 2013 season, Bradley Wiggins insists that he is again motivated to get back to racing and he hopes to find back to his amazing 2012 level. He has set his sights on the Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of California in the spring before going on to support Chris Froome in the Tour de France.

When he started his 2013 season, Bradley Wiggins was cycling's major star after an amazing 2012 season that had seen him become the first British Tour de France winner and Olympic gold medallist in the time trial and take wins in the Paris-Nice, the Tour de Romandie and the Criterium du Dauphiné. After a disappointing 2013 season in which he missed the Tour and left the Giro due to illness, there is much less focus on the Brit.

Apparently, this has served him well as he is now eager to get back to racing. He has now come to terms with the amazing amount of success he had in 2012 and enjoys the lack of pressure. This has allowed him to prepare himself for the coming season like he did two years ago and he looking forward to his season debut in the Challenge Mallorca which starts on Sunday.

"I've come into this season wanting to race," Cyclingnews reports him to have said on Tuesday during a team training camp in Mallorca, "and that's the main thing. It's a little bit like two years ago, in 2012, and it's always a good sign being happy like that.

"I started to come to terms with it all [his success] last summer, missing the Tour was a blessing in disguise," he added. "Before there was a big hangover from 2012 and it was like ‘God, I've got to start doing it all over again.' I've never struggled with training but once I got into racing [in 2013], I was going through the motions.

"That [Tour win] changed everything," he said. "I left home pretty much unknown and came home the most famous man in the country for that week."

Moved kids to another school

With the Lance Armstrong story stealing the headlines last winter, Wiggins suddenly found himself in some unwanted spotlight. As the reigning Tour champion, he was suddenly compared to the disgraced American.

"It was hard for me and the family," he said. "It affected them as well. The Lance Armstrong thing in January... my kids started getting harassed at school. 'Is your dad on drugs? He won the Tour. Is he the same as Lance Armstrong?' My son getting bullied at school. I had to move my kids from that school and move them to another school.

"Horrendous stuff. Horrible. I felt responsible for that and it all added to my unhappiness at the time. But like I say a year on and it feels like a complete contrast. I feel much more comfortable in my own shoes now.

Wiggins wants to show that he is ready right from the beginning of the season.

"For me it's about hitting the ground running like in 2012. I went to Oman last year and I was struggling."
 

Going back to the Tour

Wiggins has a deep knowledge of cycling history and has always been attracted by the biggest races. In the past, he has done the Paris-Roubaix and it has long been rumoured that the cobbled classic will be his first big target.

Wiggins confirms that he will do a number of classics in the early part of the season, with Roubaix being a genuine objective. Then he will focus on the Tour of California which he hasn't done since 2008.

"All being well I would then slot back into the pre-Tour program, which is the [Criterium du] Dauphine and altitude training," he said. "But rather than assuming I'm in such and such a position for the Tour, it's all small steps forward, not just performance goals. Some of them are training goals and assessing where I'm at, which is quite important for me."

With Wiggins hoping to return to the Tour, the obvious question is how he will share the responsibility with reigning champion Chris Froome. However, Wiggins makes it clear that he will be there in a support role.

"Chris is set to dominate the Tour for the next few years, and for me to be able to get back to the Tour," he said. "I need to be in the kind of shape that would make a podium place possible, just as [teammate] Richie [Porte] was last year and again in 2012 with Mick Rogers, Richie and Chris."

Wiggins hopes that he can take some of the pressure off Froome's shoulders.

"I kind of felt I won the public over, especially the French public, two years ago," he said. "Part of that was because I spoke French. And I had a laugh with them. It's like the film Gladiator, you win the public and you win your freedom. I kind of won my freedom. Whereas the opposite happened with Chris if you like. It would be nice to go back to the Tour and, if anything, just take the pressure off Chris a little bit. Take some of those questions for him. And challenge people for him."

The relationship between Froome and Wiggins has been tainted since 2012 but the duo sat down to talk at a recent training camp in Mallorca. Wiggins insists that they have put their past controversies behind them.

"We're actually looking forward to racing together," he said. "It's nice when it's like that. I want to do the team proud and do myself proud."
 

Only one of three clean Tour winners

Wiggins insists that he won the Tour de France clean and says that he is one of very few to have done so.

"I am a clean Tour winner, I have no skeletons in the closet," he told Het Nieuwsblad. "Not many people can say that, it is only a group of three riders. From now on, I will talk freely. Not in a condescending way but I want people to love cycling again. I am going to answer questions, I am going to speak on TV. Last year I was not ready. We had just had the Oprah show and people wanted me to have an opining. "What do you think about it?" It didn't work.

"Now I am calmer and understand that people come and tell me that I have inspired them. That whole Wiggo effect, the increased number of bicycles sold in Britain, now I realize what it is all about."

Wiggins' contract expires at the end of 2014 but says that any discussions with Sky have been postponed for now. It has been reported that 2014 would be his final year of road racing but he is quick to dismiss the idea. However, he doesn't rule out a return to the track for the 2016 Olympics.

"That was where it all started for me in Sydney [2000]," he said. "To finish there, and hopefully go out on a high, would be great."