Wiggins going for Gold no. 5 at Rio Olympics

Grassroots cycling and youth coaching will be Bradley Wiggins’ focus in the future - but not before the Tour champ has his best stab at a fifth gold medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

Speaking of Team Sky’s efforts to win the summer’s Tour de France and the efforts behind 2013 winner Chris Froome, Wiggins told the BBC: “We’re all working towards that goal of being in the best possible shape at the Tour to do that job.”

But as for his own goals, he said: “I want to go to the next Olympics and go for gold medal number five, that’s a big goal for me in two years time, and after that, stay in sport, because it’s been a big part of my life.”

So it’s looking like an active retirement for Sir Bradley, then, who added he wanted to: “be involved at grassroots somewhere, because all this inspirational stuff, the kids are kind of the future of everything really, not just sport, but life.”

Recently we reported how Sir Dave Brailsford said that riding for track gold at the Rio Olympics in 2016 would make "a fitting end" to Sir Bradley Wiggins' career.

Wiggins is winner of four Olympic gold medals, three of them in the velodrome as well as the time trial on the road at London 2012, that success coming less than a fortnight after he became the first British rider to win the Tour de France.

Sky team mate Chris Froome succeeded him to the yellow jersey last year and will once again lead the British WorldTour team's challenge when this year's race gets under way in Yorkshire in July.

That leaves Wiggins, who turned 34 in April, chasing other goals as his career heads towards its conclusion, and Brailsford believes that the team pursuit in Rio, which the rider has said he would like to ride in, could be the ideal way for him to bring down the curtain.

Asked whether Wiggins could make the squad for Rio, Brailsford said: "I can't see why it couldn't be. That would be the end of Brad's career, I think, and if you think about a fitting end to his career, it would make a great last chapter.