Sir Bradley Wiggins has acquired new management at the M&C Saatchi Merlin agency as he attempts to reconfigure his image following the controversy last September over therapeutic use exemptions and with a UK Anti-Doping inquiry still to report on the delivery of a medical package to Team Sky at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné.
Wiggins’s low-key confirmation on 28 December that his racing days were finally over would appear to be linked to the move, so too his recent decision to participate in the skiing reality TV show The Jump, going full circle on his previous assertions that he was determined to eschew celebrity sporting culture after hanging up his wheels.
Saatchi Merlin worked with sporting personalities such as Andrew Flintoff and Jamie Redknapp after their playing careers ended, and have the Olympic champions Greg Rutherford and Sir Mo Farah on their books. “Having now retired, the reach into broadcasting and developing my own brand will be very important,” Wiggins said in a statement from the agency.
Wiggins moved to Simon Fuller’s XIX agency in the wake of his stellar 2012 season when he won the Tour de France and the gold medal in the time trial at the London Olympic Games. The Guardian understands that XIX will continue to work with him on joint ventures such as his range of children’s bikes available through Halfords, and his eponymous team, which is reported to have gained a new title sponsor in Skoda for 2017 as part of a multimillion-pound deal which will see Wiggins figuring in adverts for the car company.
The change of direction comes in the wake of the revelation last September through hacked computer data that Wiggins had been permitted to have three injections of the corticosteroid triamcinolone to combat pollen allergies before three major Tours, including his successful attempt at the 2012 Tour de France.
No rules were broken but the TUEs have drawn criticism from figures as senior as the three-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome, Wiggins’s former team-mate at Team Sky, who last Friday repeated his assertion that questions about the case remain unanswered.
Wiggins is also involved in the Jiffy‑bag imbroglio, with the departing Ukad head David Kenworthy expressing his dissatisfaction with the information provided about its contents, stated by the Team Sky head Sir Dave Brailsford to be the mucolytic Fluimucil.
Team Sky have denied wrongdoing in the affair, as has Wiggins, but Kenworthy said his agency would “dig and delve” until the bag’s contents have been determined beyond doubt, while the head of the House of Commons culture media and sport committee, Damian Collins MP, called upon Sky to give full details of their use of Fluimucil.