Rio Olympics 2016: Great Bradley Wiggins preparing to say goodbye where it all started in Ghent

IT all started back in Ghent, Belgium, watching his dad hammer round a track like there was no tomorrow.

So there is nowhere else Bradley Wiggins would want it to end.

Three months from now, he will push a body far older than his 36 years through six more days of torture in the town where he was born. Then he will climb out of the saddle. And that will be that.

Wiggins has done too much to be pitied as the champ who clambered into the ring once too often and left as a chump.

Which is why, as a fifth gold medal glittered on his chest and he told you his Olympic days were done, you looked in his eyes and knew he meant it.

But what a way to bow out. Hauling his crew through a heart-stopping team pursuit final in the bedlam of Rio’s velodrome, hunting down the Aussies inch by inch until the crowd vibe changed and they sensed glory was in their grasp — if only they could grind out one last change in pace from their aching thighs.

When they found it and turned a 0.6sec deficit into a 0.5sec lead — an eternity in these races — I can honestly say it has rarely been my privilege to experience such perfect sporting drama.

Wiggins, Ed Clancy, Steven Burke and Owain Doull were poetry in motion, four man-machines in skin-tight petrol blue moving as one on brilliant white bikes, propelled ever faster by an uncanny awareness of where the opposition were.

As they crossed the line, all but Wiggins exploded with joy. Their leader, their hero, their mate, was too emptied of energy to do anything but gulp in lungfuls of air.

All he could think of right then was a beer . . . and a happy retirement.