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Bradley Wiggins is returning to competitive sport for the first time since retiring from cycling, with the 2012 Tour de France champion taking part in British Rowing’s indoor championships next month.
British Rowing said Friday that Wiggins, 37, will compete in a 2000m race in the Dec. 9 event at the velodrome where cycling was staged during the London Olympics.
Wiggins retired from cycling in December after winning a fifth Olympic gold in Rio. He has since enjoyed rowing on an indoor machine for fitness, sharing images of his workouts on social media.
Wiggins this week said he was put through “living hell” over the past year while U.K. Anti-Doping investigated allegations of wrongdoing in cycling, which centered on the contents of a medical package delivered to Wiggins at the 2011 Dauphine Libere race in France.
No charges will be brought by UKAD and Wiggins denounced what he perceived as a “malicious witch hunt.”
Wiggins is the most decorated British Olympian with eight medals and the first Brit to win the Tour de France.
He hinted at rowing ambitions in his 2012 book, “My Time.”
“I would love to try to be a rower at the next Olympics, in a lightweight four or something,” he wrote then. “It would be impossible to do: go down, lock, stock and barrel, live in Henley, train and try and be at the next Olympics in a rowing boat. It’s never going to happen, but it would be a different challenge. Imagine that, going and winning the coxless lightweight four: Olympic gold in rowing, four years off. Unfortunately there is now way I could do it.”
Wiggins brought it up again at a corporate event in Manchester in June, according to the Daily Mail.
“I took up rowing when I retired just to keep fit, but my numbers started getting quite good, so I’ve started taking it up professionally now and getting coached seven days a week,” he said, according to the newspaper. “I’m doing the British Championships in December, and I’m going to see how far I can take it, maybe a sixth Olympic gold?”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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