HIS EPIC journey from Athens to Beijing now complete, Bradley Wiggins has returned home to London a different man from the 24-year-old who “could have quit cycling and might never have been remembered as an Olympic champion”.

He revelled in the attention of builders who cheered him as he was being photographed on Thursday at the site of the 2012 Games in Stratford, holding his two gold medals for the 4km individual pursuit and the team pursuit. A breathless cyclist brought a smile to his face when he approached and asked to have his picture taken with the three-time Olympic gold medallist, whose feelings of joy were in sharp contrast to the dark days when he returned from Athens.

“It’s a totally different story to four years ago and I’m a totally different person in so many ways,” said 28-year-old Wiggins, who won his first Olympic gold medal in the 4km individual pursuit in 2004, having collected a bronze four years earlier in Sydney.

In Beijing he could have become the first British athlete to win three gold medals at a single Games since Henry Taylor achieved the feat in swimming at the London Games in 1908, but he and Mark Cavendish finished eighth in the madison before Chris Hoy claimed his historic third gold in the men’s sprint. “Physically, I was tired and I wasn’t on top of it in the madison. The whole thing just took its toll emotionally as well,” Wiggins reflected. “I knew the challenge I was taking on, three endurance events in five days, I knew it was a massive task but, if someone had said to me that I would win two golds but not the third, I would have been happy. I was happy for Chris as well because we have grown up together in the British team. We’ve inspired one another.”

Insulated from the world outside, Wiggins saw no newspapers or news channels in the Olympic Village and the internet was heavily censored, so Britain’s cyclists fed off the success of one another from the moment Nicole Cooke won the women’s road race on the opening weekend. “Every day someone was getting a medal. You couldn’t keep up with it,” Wiggins recalled. “Then you were raring to go and get your medal. It had that effect on everyone.” From the performance director, Dave Brailsford, to the other members of the squad’s senior management team, Shane Sutton, Steve Peters and Chris Boardman, the organisation and level of professionalism instilled over the past six years has been the cornerstone of the cyclists’ successes.

Yet Wiggins came close to not sharing in it. Depressed and drinking too much in the months after winning a gold medal in Athens, he almost gave up on the sport he had loved from the moment he witnessed Boardman’s Olympic triumph in 1992. His bronze medal in Sydney was the defining moment of his life, for it convinced him that he had the tools to achieve his highest ambitions, so he dedicated himself to reaching his own personal pinnacle in Athens.

“In the four years up to Athens I was so dedicated and I missed a lot of the usual things that you do in your early 20s like going out on the piss with my mates,” he said. “I never did all that because after Sydney I threw myself into the challenge of winning an Olympic gold medal. I had seen other people do it in Sydney and I became really fixated on doing it too. I wanted a piece of that. So I got to Athens and managed to win three medals at the Olympics and no one really gave a monkey’s. I never got any attention. Other performances overshadowed mine, like Kelly Holmes winning two gold medals and Matthew Pinsent winning his fourth. We never really got the attention then that the cycling team has received this time.”

He is looking forward to competing in the Tour of Britain next month and next year’s Tour de France, and the desire is strong to achieve more success four years from now. “I feel so different to four years ago because I really enjoy my sport now,” Wiggins added. “After the last Olympics it all came so easily and quickly to me and, at 24, I didn’t appreciate how much other people had worked towards that goal over the years. If I only ever win one more bike race, it will have to be in London, a London boy winning at his home Olympic Games and maybe retiring then.”