Sir Bradley Marc Wiggins (born 28 April 1980) is an English former professional road and track racing cyclist, who competed professionally between 2001-16. He became Great Britain’s most decorated Olympian, amassing eight medals across five Games, and remains the only rider to have won World and Olympic titles on the track and road. In 2012 he was the first British winner of the Tour de France. The son of the Australian cyclist Gary Wiggins, Wiggins was born to a British mother in Ghent, Belgium, and raised in London from the age of two. He competed on the track from the early part of his career until 2008. Between 2000 and 2008 he won ten medals at the track world championships, of which six were gold: three in the individual pursuit, two in the team pursuit and one in the madison. His first Olympic medal was a bronze in the team pursuit in Sydney 2000, before winning three medals including the gold in the individual pursuit at the Athens 2004, and two golds in the individual and team pursuit at the Beijing 2008. On the road, Wiggins turned professional in 2001 but made it his focus from 2008. Initially viewed as a time trial specialist and rouleur, he showed his ability in stage races when he came fourth in the 2009 Tour de France; he was promoted to third after Lance Armstrong's results were annulled in 2012. He signed with the newly formed Team Sky in 2010, and in 2011 claimed his first victory in a major stage race in the Critérium du Dauphiné, as well as finishing third, later promoted to second, in the Vuelta a España. In 2012, Wiggins won the Paris–Nice, the Tour de Romandie, the Critérium du Dauphiné, and became the first British cyclist to win the Tour de France and the time trial at the 2012 Summer Olympics. Wiggins won Vélo d'Or award for best rider in 2012, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award and a knighthood as part of the 2013 New Year Honours. In 2014, he won gold in the time trial at the road world championships, and founded the WIGGINS cycling team. Wiggins returned to the track at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and in 2015 he set a new hour record with a distance of 54.526 km (33.881 mi). In 2016, he won a further world championship in the madison, and gold in the team pursuit at the Olympics, his fifth successive medal winning appearance at the Games. He retired from all forms of professional cycling in 2016. During his career and afterwards he faced allegations that he exploited a loophole in cycling's anti-doping regulations to use a performance-enhancing drug, injections of the powerful corticosteroid, triamcinolone. He did not receive any bans or suspensions in relation to doping during his career.[4] In 2018, the British House of Commons Committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport concluded that Team Sky had used triamcinolone in 2012 under TUE (Therapeutic Use Exemption) "to prepare Bradley Wiggins, and possibly other riders supporting him, for the Tour de France. The purpose of this was not to treat medical need, but to improve his power to weight ratio ahead of the race."[5]