Sir Bradley Wiggins defends decision to include Armstrong as an ‘icon’ in book

The 2012 Tour de France winner, and five-time Olympic gold medallist, said he knew including the disgraced 47-year-old American incon would not be popular, but said he "cannot change the way he made me feel".

Armstrong won the Tour a record seven times between 1999 and 2005 after recovering from cancer, but was later stripped of the titles and banned from the sport for life for doping.

But Wiggins still believes he was right to include the American in his book.

"I'm not condoning for one minute what Lance did," Wiggins told the BBC.

"From the angle I wrote this book at, I couldn't not include him in it.

"At the end of the day, we're all human and if someone asks me now, I'm going to tell them what I think - I haven't got an agenda, I'm not in a team, and not everyone is going to like it."

As part of his book, Wiggins refers to Henri Desgrange, who founded the Tour in 1903, and how he would have wanted a "super-athlete who would not only defeat his opponents, but also whatever nature might throw at him".

Wiggins writes: "If Desgrange could name the attributes to the perfect winner of the race, I think Lance would tick every box, and in personality as well with the character about him and all that. So that's how I describe it, and I don't think I'm out of place by saying that."