Has Sir Bradley Wiggins changed his mind on compulsory cycle helmets?

Has Sir Bradley Wiggins ditched his view that cyclists should be required by law to wear a helmet?

Whether it’s winning the Tour de France or world and Olympic time trial gold, or breaking the UCI Hour Record, in recent years if you’ve seen Sir Bradley Wiggins on a bike it’s almost certainly been a Pinarello.

And he'll have been wearing a helmet too - as the UCI rules require - but he has said in the past that he believes all bike riders should have to wear one.

Today the man who is the biggest star in British cycling has been snapped riding a Boris Bike in London, shown in this tweet from the capital’s Santander Cycles bike-sharing scheme – and what’s more, without a helmet.

OMG it’s @officialWIGGINS! Slow down, Sir, you’re making the rest of us look bad! #SantanderCycles pic.twitter.com/DDHup5jlZo

— Santander Cycles (@SantanderCycles) February 9, 2016

The four-time Olympic champion said back in 2013 they should be mandatory for all cyclists.

> Sir Bradley Wiggins: Cycle helmets should be compulsory

Speaking to BBC’s Newsround, he said: “I think certain laws for cyclists need to be passed to protect us more than anything.

“Making helmets compulsory on the roads, making it illegal to maybe have an iPod in while you’re riding a bike, just little things like that would make a huge difference.”

One of Wiggins’ predecessors as a world and Olympic champion as well as a wearer of the yellow jersey at the Tour de France, Chris Boardman, told road.cc last year that cycle helmets are “not even in the top 10 of things you need to do to keep cycling safe or more widely, save the most lives.”

We wonder if that’s a view Wiggins now shares?

> Boardman: "Helmets not even in top 10 of things that keep cycling safe"