title: Cargill family

text: A review of William Duncan MacMillan's 1998 book "MacMillan: The American Grain Family", described the MacMillans as "one of Minnesota's wealthiest clans" and "one its most doggedly secretive". MacMillan offers the closest look yet at the private lives behind the largest privately held company in the world.


title: Cargill family

text: Cargill married Ellen "Ella" Theresa Stowell, and they had four children—William "Will" Samuel Cargill, Edna Clara Cargill (1871–1963), Emma Cargill, and Austen Cargill (died 1957)—the second generation of the Cargill family.


title: Cargill family

text: Edna Clara Cargill (1871–1963) married John H. MacMillan Sr (1869–1940). Edna and John H. MacMillan Sr had two sons and a daughter—John H. MacMillan Jr, Cargill MacMillan Sr (1900–1968), and Emma Cargill married Fred M. Hanchette.


title: Cargill family

text: The third generation included the four children of Edna and John H. MacMillan Sr (1869–1940)—John H. MacMillan Jr (1895–1960) and his wife Marion Dickson (1892–1980)—John Hugh MacMillan III (1928–2008), Whitney Duncan MacMillan (1930–2006), and Marion MacMillan Pictet (1930–2009), who had a daughter, Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer who had two children.


title: Cargill family

text: The four children of their second oldest son, Cargill MacMillan Sr (1900–1968) and his wife Pauline Whitney (1900–1990) are also second generation—Cargill MacMillan Jr (1927–2011), Whitney MacMillan (1929-2020), Alice Whitney MacMillan (1932–1932), and Pauline MacMillan Keinath (born 1934 in Hennepin County, Minnesota). Whitney MacMillan (1929 – 2020)—Cargill MacMillan Sr's second oldest son—led the company from 1976 to 1995.


title: Cargill family

text: Their oldest son, Cargill MacMillan Jr (born Hennepin County, Minnesota, March 29, 1927 – November 14, 2011) and his wife had four children.


title: Cargill family

text: The third generation also includes the daughter and son of Austen Cargill and Anne Ray. Their daughter, Margaret Anne Cargill (1920–2006), who never married, was a philanthropist. The fourth generation includes the two sons and daughter of James R. Cargill (1923–2006) and his wife Mary Janet Morse Cargill (died February 5, 2010). James died in 2006 and his widow died in 2010, had lived in her hometown, Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was on the list of billionaires in 2010. The two children of their oldest son, James R. (Susan) Cargill II (born 1949), whose hometown was Birchwood, Wisconsin. are part of the fourth generation.


title: Cargill family

text: Their second son, Austen S. Cargill II (born 1951), who lives in Livingston, Montana, has two children. He attended Oregon State University and University of Minnesota.


title: Cargill family

text: His daughter, a fourth generation member, Marianne Cargill Liebmann (born 1953) married Steve Liebmann. Their son, Andrew C. Liebmann, is currently on the Cargill board of directors. Marianne Liebmann studied at Montana State University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree.


title: Cargill family

text: By 2016, the fifth generation of the Cargill family was represented on Cargill Inc's board of directors—Andrew Cargill Liebmann and Richard Cargill. Non-family Cargill CEO David MacLennan has taken the "next-generation family members on tours of the company's facilities and answers family members' questions weekly. Neither of the new board members, who were both in their mid-thirties, have ever worked for the company, but "they have taken corporate governance courses". In 2014, 34-year-old astrophysicist, Andrew Cargill Liebmann—the son of Marianne Cargill Liebmann—replaced his uncle who had retired from the board. Liebman's mentorship included a tour of the company's interests in India, China and Singapore. Richard Cargill was also appointed to the Cargill board of directors to replace a retired Cargill relative. MacLennan, who had made major changes to Cargill Inc, also moved the company's headquarters from the 85-year-old lakeside offices in a mansion by a lake in Wayzata, Minneapolis to more "mundane" office space nearby.


title: Cargill family

text: The Cargill-MacMillan family is the fourth richest family in the United States on "Forbes"' list. In 2016 their revenue was estimated at USD$49 billion, and $113.5 billion in 2019.


title: Cargill family

text: By 2019, Cargill Inc had been listed as America's largest private company since 1986, in all but two years that Forbes has maintained the list.


title: Cargill family

text: W. Duncan MacMillan, and James and Margaret Cargill died in 2006. In an article entitled, "The Richest People You've Never Heard Of", "Forbes" estimated that the fortunes of the MacMillans were worth $1.2 billion each, and that of James and Margaret Cargill were estimated at $1.8 billion each.


title: Cargill family

text: John Hugh MacMillan III (1928–2008), who worked for Cargill Inc for 35 years, from 1955 until his retirement in 1990 and served on the board of directors for many years, was on the 2007 "Forbes" list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $1.7 billion.


title: Cargill family

text: Four members of the Cargill family ranked 220 on "The 400 Richest Americans 2009" list, each with a net worth of $1.6 billion. Their fortunes were all listed as "inherited". Mary Janet Morse Cargill (85), who lived in Minneapolis, was the widow of James R. Cargill (1923–2006) of the second generation. The three others are third generation—Austen S. Cargill II (58) in Livingston, Montana, James R. Cargill II (60) Birchwood, and Marianne Cargill Liebmann (56) in Bozeman. Three of Cargill MacMillan Sr's four children Whitney MacMillan, Alice Whitney MacMillan, and Pauline MacMillan Keinath (born 1934 in Hennepin County, Minnesota), were on "The 400 Richest Americans 2009" with a listed revenue of $4.3 billion each. Marion MacMillan Pictet was also included on the list with an inherited fortune of $4.3 billion.


title: Cargill family

text: Marianne Cargill Liebmann's net worth was $3.1 billion in 2020. In 2009, Forbes listed the net worth of Cargill MacMillan Jr at an estimated $4.3 billion. MacMillan Jr, who was a "longtime" member of Cargill Inc board of directors, had "no day-to-day role in the company".


title: Cargill family

text: Cargill heiress Marion MacMillan Pictet (1932–2009) ranked #176 on "Forbes" list in 2010 with a net worth of $4.5 billion, an increase over $4.3 in 2009. The net worth of her daughter, Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer (born 1961/62), the great-great-granddaughter of William W. Cargill, was $4.4 billion in 2020, placing her #680 on the richest people in the United States in 2020. Sontheim Meyer's inheritance represented an "estimated 7% stake in food giant Cargill."


title: Cargill family

text: Margaret Anne Cargill, a fourth generation member of the Cargill family, who died in 2006, had bequeathed her shares of the "Minnesota-based food, agriculture and fertilizer conglomerate" Cargill Inc worth about $6 billion to two non-profits—the Anne Ray Charitable Trust and the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation. For many years the charities could not access the funds because it would mean liquidating "private Cargill stock". When Cargill sold its 64-percent stakes in Mosaic in 2011, the two nonprofits exchanged the private Cargill stock for 114.5 million shares of the public Mosaic stock. When all of these Mosaic shares are finally sold, the two charities could become "two of the wealthiest grant makers in the United States." In 2012 Margaret Anne Cargill posthumously earned the #1 spot in The Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual list of America's 50 most generous donors, beating George Soros, Michael Bloomberg and Paul Allen. In announcing the winner "Forbes" said that "Not only is she almost entirely unknown, but the heiress to the Cargill agribusiness fortune passed away in 2006."


title: Nigerians

text: Nigerians or the Nigerian people are citizens of Nigeria or people with ancestry from Nigeria. The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country. This name was allegedly coined in the late 19th century by British journalist Flora Shaw, who later married Baron Frederick Lugard, a British colonial administrator. "Nigeria" is composed of various ethnic groups and cultures and the term Nigerian refers to a citizenship-based civic nationality. Nigerians derive from over 250 ethnic groups and languages. Though there are multiple ethnic groups in Nigeria, economic factors result in significant mobility of Nigerians of multiple ethnic and religious backgrounds to reside in territories in Nigeria that are outside their ethnic or religious background, resulting in the mixing of the various ethnic and religious groups, especially in Nigeria's cities. The English language is the "lingua franca" of Nigerians. 50% of Nigerians are Muslims and about 49.3% are Christians. These are the two major religions, according to statista.com, more than half of the Nigerian population is said to be Muslim, others are also practiced but are not as widely known as these two.


title: Nigerians

text: Nigerians come from multiple ethnic and religious backgrounds as the founding of Nigeria was the outcome of a colonial creation by the British Empire.


title: Nigerians

text: There have been several major historical states in Nigeria that have influenced Nigerian society via their kings and their legal and taxation systems, and the use of religion to legitimize the power of the king and to unite the people. Northern Nigeria has been culturally influenced by Islamic influence including several major historic Islamic states in the region. The Kanem-Bornu Empire and the Sokoto Caliphate were major historical Islamic states in northern Nigeria. Southern Nigeria historically held several powerful states, including the Benin Empire and Oyo Empire, Ife Confederacy and several other Yoruba states.


title: Nigerians

text: Nigerian culture was profoundly affected by the British colonial rule. Such as British colonial authorities denouncement and attacks upon polygamy, trial by ordeal, and certain types of sacrifices. At the same time, British colonial authorities maintained and promoted traditional Nigerian culture that strengthened colonial administration. The British spread Christianity throughout southern Nigeria and Christian missionaries assisted British authorities in establishing a Western-style education system in Nigeria that resulted in the teaching of the English language in Nigeria and its subsequent adoption as Nigeria's main language. The British replaced unpaid household labor with wage labor. Prior to colonisation in the twentieth century, Nigeria's tribes usually possessed the land as a community, such that land could not be bought or sold. Colonisation brought the notion of individuals owning land and commercialisation of land began.


title: Nigerians

text: In Nigeria, more than seventy percent of Nigerians live in villages of two different types: the first type used by the Igbo and Tiv involves a collection of dispersed compounds while the second type used amongst the Hausa fulani, Yoruba, and Kanuri involves nuclei of compounds. These villages compose members of the ethnicity-related through ancestry as well as strangers who have been assimilated into the ethnicity. Since the time prior to colonisation to the present it has been a common practice of Nigeria's tribes to adopt strangers into the tribes. A male elder in the community commonly serves as a village chief or Baale.


title: Nigerians

text: In the large cities of Nigeria, there is a substantial intermingling of Nigerians with foreigners, especially Europeans, Lebanese, and Indians. The economic importance of Nigeria's cities has resulted in migrations of people from their traditional ethnic or cultural homeland to cities outside those territories. Igbo, Hausa-Fulani and Ibibio people have commonly migrated to Lagos and many southerners migrate to the north to trade or work while a number of northern seasonal workers and small-scale entrepreneurs go to the south.


title: Nigerians

text: Ethnic, religious, and regional disputes and tensions have commonly divided Nigerians on political issues. In particular, cultural and political divisions between the Muslim north and the Christian south has politicised religion and caused significant political disputes in Nigeria. Ethnic-motivated and religious-motivated violence by extremists has increased these tensions as well.


title: Nigerians

text: However, despite instances of extremism, most Nigerians continue to peacefully coexist, and a common Nigerian identity has been fostered amongst the more-educated and affluent Nigerians as well as with the many Nigerians who leave small homogeneous ethnic communities to seek economic opportunities in the cities where the population is ethnically mixed. Although there are cultural divisions amongst Nigerians, the English language is commonly used as their primary language. Also, most Nigerians share a strong commitment to individual liberties and democracy. Even during periods of military rule, such military governments were pressured to maintain democratic stances by the Nigerian people. Nigeria's political figures commonly know multiple indigenous languages outside their own indigenous language.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: Foreskin restoration is the process of expanding the skin on the penis to reconstruct an organ similar to the foreskin, which has been removed by circumcision or injury. Foreskin restoration is primarily accomplished by stretching the residual skin of the penis, but surgical methods also exist. Restoration creates a facsimile of the foreskin, but specialized tissues removed during circumcision cannot be reclaimed. Actual regeneration of the foreskin is experimental at this time. Some forms of restoration involve only partial regeneration in instances of a "high-cut" wherein the circumcisee feels that the circumciser removed too much skin and that there is not enough skin for erections to be comfortable.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: In the Greco-Roman world intact genitals, including the foreskin, were considered a sign of beauty, civility, and masculinity. In Classical Greek and Roman societies (8th century BC to 6th century AD), exposure of the glans was considered disgusting and improper, and did not conform to the Hellenistic ideal of gymnastic nudity. Men with short foreskins would wear the kynodesme to prevent exposure. As a consequence of this social stigma, an early form of foreskin restoration known as "epispasm" was practiced among some Jews in Ancient Rome (8th century BC to 5th century AD).


title: Foreskin restoration

text: Foreskin restoration is of ancient origin and dates back to the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius (AD 14-37), when surgical means were taken to lengthen the foreskin of individuals born with either a short foreskin that did not cover the glans completely or a completely exposed glans as a result of circumcision. Again, during World War II some European Jews sought foreskin restoration to avoid Nazi persecution.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: Non-surgical foreskin restoration, accomplished through tissue expansion, is the more commonly used method.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: Tissue expansion has long been known to stimulate mitosis, and research shows that regenerated human tissues have the attributes of the original tissue.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: During restoration via tissue expansion, the remaining penile skin is pulled forward over the glans, and tension is maintained either manually or through the aid of a foreskin restoration device.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: Many specialized foreskin restoration devices that grip the skin with or without tape are also commercially available. Tension from these devices may be applied by weights, elastic straps, or inflation as a means to either push the skin forward on the penis, or by a combination of these methods.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: Surgical methods of foreskin restoration, known as foreskin reconstruction, usually involve a method of grafting skin onto the distal portion of the penile shaft. The grafted skin is typically taken from the scrotum, which contains the same smooth muscle (known as dartos fascia) as does the skin of the penis. One method involves a four-stage procedure in which the penile shaft is buried in the scrotum for a period of time. Such techniques are costly, and have the potential to produce unsatisfactory results or serious complications related to the skin graft. The frenulum can also be reconstructed.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: British Columbia resident Paul Tinari was held down and circumcised at the age of eight in what he stated was "a routine form of punishment" for masturbation at residential schools. Following a lawsuit Tinari's surgical foreskin restoration was covered by the British Columbia Ministry of Health. The plastic surgeon who performed the restoration was the first in Canada to have done such an operation, and used a technique similar to that described above.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: The amount of time required to restore a foreskin using non-surgical methods depends on the amount of skin present at the start of the process, the subject's degree of commitment, the techniques used, the body's natural degree of plasticity, and the length of foreskin the individual desires.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: The results of surgical restoration are immediate, but often described as unsatisfactory and most restoration groups advise against surgery.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: Restoration creates a facsimile of the prepuce, but specialized tissues removed during circumcision cannot be reclaimed. Surgical procedures exist to reduce the size of the opening once restoration is complete (as depicted in the image above), or it can be alleviated through a longer commitment to the skin expansion regime to allow more skin to collect at the tip.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: The natural foreskin is composed of smooth dartos muscle tissue (called the "peripenic muscle"), large blood vessels, extensive innervation, outer skin, and inner mucosa.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: The natural foreskin has three principal components, in addition to blood vessels, nerves, and connective tissue: skin, which is exposed exteriorly; mucous membrane, which is the surface in contact with the glans penis when the penis is flaccid; and a band of muscle within the tip of the foreskin. Generally, the skin grows more readily in response to stretching than does the mucous membrane. The ring of muscle which normally holds the foreskin closed is completely removed in the majority of circumcisions and cannot be regrown, so the covering resulting from stretching techniques is usually looser than that of a natural foreskin. Nonetheless, according to some observers, it is difficult to distinguish a restored foreskin from a natural foreskin because restoration produces a "nearly normal-appearing prepuce".


title: Foreskin restoration

text: The process of foreskin restoration seeks to regenerate some of the tissue removed by circumcision, as well as provide coverage of the glans. According to research, the foreskin comprises over half of the skin and mucosa of the human penis.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: In some men, foreskin restoration may alleviate certain problems they attribute to their circumcision. Such problems include prominent scarring (33%), insufficient penile skin for comfortable erection (27%), erectile curvature from uneven skin loss (16%), and pain and bleeding upon erection/manipulation (17%). The poll also asked about awareness of or involvement in foreskin restoration and included an open comment section. Many respondents and their wives "reported that restoration resolved the unnatural dryness of the circumcised penis, which caused abrasion, pain or bleeding during intercourse, and that restoration offered unique pleasures, which enhanced sexual intimacy." One man reported he had a great loss of sensation in the glans because his foreskin was not present.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: Foreskin restoration has been reported as having beneficial emotional results in some men, and has been proposed as a treatment for negative feelings in some adult men about their infant circumcisions that someone else decided to have performed on them.


title: Foreskin restoration

text: Various groups have been founded since the late 20th century, especially in North America where circumcision has been routinely performed on infants. In 1989, the National Organization of Restoring Men (NORM) was founded as a non-profit support group for men undertaking foreskin restoration. In 1991, the group UNCircumcising Information and Resource Centers (UNCIRC) was formed, which was incorporated into NORM in 1994. NORM chapters have been founded throughout the United States, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. In France, there are two associations about this. The "Association contre la Mutilation des Enfants" AME (association against child mutilation), and more recently "Droit au Corps" (right to the body).


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: The Mozilla Foundation (stylized as moz://a) is an American non-profit organization that exists to support and collectively lead the open source Mozilla project. Founded in July 2003, the organization sets the policies that govern development, operates key infrastructure and controls Mozilla trademarks and copyrights. It owns a taxable subsidiary: the Mozilla Corporation, which employs many Mozilla developers and coordinates releases of the Mozilla Firefox web browser and Mozilla Thunderbird email client. The Mozilla Foundation was founded by the Netscape-affiliated Mozilla Organization. The organization is currently based in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, California, United States.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: The Mozilla Foundation describes itself as "a non-profit organization that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet". The Mozilla Foundation is guided by the Mozilla Manifesto, which lists 10 principles which Mozilla believes "are critical for the Internet to continue to benefit the public good as well as commercial aspects of life".


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: On February 23, 1998, Netscape created the Mozilla Organization to co-ordinate the development of the Mozilla Application Suite. When AOL (Netscape's parent) drastically scaled back its involvement with Mozilla Organization, the Mozilla Foundation was launched on July 15, 2003, to ensure Mozilla could survive without Netscape. AOL assisted in the initial creation of the Mozilla Foundation, transferring hardware and intellectual property to the organization, employed a three-person team for the first three months of its existence to help with the transition, and donated $2 million to the foundation over two years.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: On August 3, 2005, the Mozilla Foundation announced the creation of Mozilla Corporation, described as "a taxable subsidiary that serves the non-profit, public benefit goals of its parent, the Mozilla Foundation, and that will be responsible for product development, marketing and distribution of Mozilla products". It also handles relationships with businesses, many of which generate income. Unlike the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation is a tax-paying entity, which gives it much greater freedom in the revenue and business activities it can pursue. From 2004 to 2014, the majority of revenue came from a deal with Google, which was the default search engine in the Firefox web browser. In November 2014, Mozilla signed a five-year partnership with Yahoo, making Yahoo! Search the default search engine for Firefox in the US. Yandex Search is the default for Firefox in Russia and Baidu continues its role as the default in China.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: In November 2017, Mozilla terminated its agreement with Yahoo two years earlier than planned. While numerous factors were attributed to the decision to terminate the agreement, including some mention that Mozilla saw declining revenues related to the switch, likely the impetus was related to the recent acquisition of Yahoo by Verizon and Oath. Per Mozilla Chief Business and Legal Officer Denelle Dixon, "We exercised our contractual right to terminate our agreement with Yahoo! based on a number of factors including doing what's best for our brand, our effort to provide quality web search, and the broader content experience for our users. We believe there are opportunities to work with Oath and Verizon outside of search."


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: Beijing Mozilla Online Ltd (), a.k.a. Mozilla China, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Corporation. Mozilla China is headquartered in Beijing.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: On January 28, 2020, the Mozilla Foundation announced that the Thunderbird project would henceforth be operating from a new wholly owned subsidiary, MZLA Technologies Corporation, in order to explore offering products and services that were not previously possible and to collect revenue through partnerships and non-charitable donations.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: The Mozilla Foundation is funded by donations and 2% of annual net revenues from the Mozilla Corporation, amounting to over US$8.3 million in 2016.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: Initial funding in 2003 came from AOL, which donated US$2 million, and from Mitch Kapor who donated US$300,000. The group has tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code, though the Mozilla Corporation subsidiary is taxable.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: In 2006, the Mozilla Foundation received US$66.8 million in revenues, of which US$61.5 million is attributed to "search royalties" from Google.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: From 2004 to 2014, the foundation had a deal with Google to make Google Search the default in the Firefox browser search bar and hence send it search referrals; a Firefox themed Google search site was also made the default home page of Firefox. The original contract expired in November 2006. However, Google renewed the contract until November 2008 and again through 2011. On December 20, 2011, Mozilla announced that the contract was once again renewed for at least three years to November 2014, at three times the amount previously paid, or nearly US$300 million annually. Approximately 90% of Mozilla's royalties revenue for 2014 was derived from this contract.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: In November 2014, Mozilla signed a five-year partnership (effective December 2014) with Yahoo!, making Yahoo! Search the default search engine for Firefox in North America. This partnership came with an annual price tag of US$375 million to be paid by Yahoo! or its acquirer in the event of an acquisition. There was also a clause stating that Mozilla reserved the right to terminate the deal early if it did not want to work with the acquirer, but the acquirer would still have to pay Mozilla the full sum per year until 2019. The default search engine in Russia will be Yandex, and in China, Baidu.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: In November 2017, however, Mozilla announced that it was switching back to Google as the default search engine. This represented an early termination of its Yahoo partnership.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: In 2006, after a request from Theo de Raadt of OpenBSD for funding from corporate entities which make a profit through the use of OpenSSH in their packaged distributions, the Mozilla Foundation donated $10,000 to de Raadt and OpenBSD for OpenSSH development. The funds donated came from money earned through the income provided by Google. The Mozilla Foundation found that without OpenSSH, much of the work done by developers would be through insecure and unsafe methods, and gave the funds as a thank you.


title: Mozilla Foundation

text: At the end of 2010, the Mozilla Foundation partnered with Knoxville Zoo in an effort to raise awareness about endangered red pandas. Two red panda (a.k.a. Firefox) cubs born at the Knoxville Zoo have officially become a part of the Mozilla community. The cubs are named Spark and Ember by online voters and Mozilla broadcast a 24-hour live video stream of the cubs for several months.


title: Scribd

text: Scribd Inc. is an American e-book and audiobook subscription service that includes one million titles. Scribd hosts 60 million documents on its open publishing platform.


title: Scribd

text: The company was founded in 2007 by Trip Adler, Jared Friedman, and Tikhon Bernstam, and headquartered in San Francisco, California. Scribd's e-book subscription service is available on Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, as well as the Kindle Fire, Nook, and personal computers. Subscribers can access unlimited books a month from 1,000 publishers, including Bloomsbury, Harlequin, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Lonely Planet, Macmillan, Perseus Book Group, Simon & Schuster, Wiley, and Workman.


title: Scribd

text: Scribd began as a site to host and share documents. While at Harvard, Trip Adler was inspired to start Scribd after learning about the lengthy process required to publish academic papers. His father, a doctor at Stanford, was told it would take 18 months to have his medical research published. Adler wanted to create a simple way to publish and share written content online. He co-founded Scribd with Jared Friedman and attended the inaugural class of Y Combinator in the summer of 2006. There, Scribd received its initial $120,000 in seed funding and then launched in a San Francisco apartment in March 2007.


title: Scribd

text: Scribd was called "the YouTube for documents", allowing anyone to self-publish on the site using its document reader. The document reader turns PDFs, Word documents, and PowerPoints into Web documents that can be shared on any website that allows embeds. In its first year, Scribd grew rapidly to 23.5 million visitors as of November 2008. It also ranked as one of the top 20 social media sites according to Comscore.


title: Scribd

text: In June 2009, Scribd launched the Scribd Store, enabling writers to easily upload and sell digital copies of their work online. That same month, the site partnered with Simon & Schuster to sell e-books on Scribd. The deal made digital editions of 5,000 titles available for purchase on Scribd, including books from bestselling authors like Stephen King, Dan Brown, and Mary Higgins Clark.


title: Scribd

text: In October 2009, Scribd launched its branded reader for media companies including "The New York Times", "Los Angeles Times", "Chicago Tribune", "The Huffington Post", TechCrunch, and MediaBistro. ProQuest began publishing dissertations and theses on Scribd in December 2009. In August 2010, many notable documents hosted on Scribd began to go viral, including the California Proposition 8 ruling, which received over 100,000 views in about 24 minutes, and HP's lawsuit against Mark Hurd's move to Oracle.


title: Scribd

text: In October 2013, Scribd officially launched its unlimited subscription service for e-books. This gave users unlimited access to Scribd's library of digital books for a flat monthly fee. The company also announced a partnership with HarperCollins which made the entire backlist of HarperCollins' catalog available on the subscription service.


title: Scribd

text: According to Chantal Restivo-Alessi, chief digital officer at HarperCollins, this marked the first time that the publisher has released such a large portion of its catalog.


title: Scribd

text: In March 2014, Scribd announced a deal with Lonely Planet, offering the travel publisher's entire library on its subscription service.


title: Scribd

text: In May 2014, Scribd further increased its subscription offering with 10,000 titles from Simon & Schuster. These titles included works from authors such as: Ray Bradbury, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ernest Hemingway, Walter Isaacson, Stephen King, Chuck Klosterman, and David McCullough. Scribd has been criticized for advertising a free 14 day trial for which payment is required before readers can trial the products. Readers discover this when they attempt to download material.


title: Scribd

text: Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription service in November 2014 and comic books in February 2015.


title: Scribd

text: In February 2016, it was announced that only titles from a rotating selection of the library would be available for unlimited reading, and subscribers would have credits to read three books and one audiobook per month from the entire library with unused credits rolling over to the next month.


title: Scribd

text: The reporting system was discontinued on February 6, 2018, in favor of a system of "constantly rotating catalogs of ebooks and audiobooks" that provided "an unlimited number of books and audiobooks, alongside unlimited access to news, magazines, documents, and sheet music" for a monthly subscription fee of US$8.99. However, under this unlimited service, Scribd would occasionally "limit the titles that you’re able to access within a specific content library in a 30-day period."


title: Scribd

text: In October 2018, Scribd announced a joint subscription to Scribd and The New York Times for $12.99 per month.


title: Scribd

text: In November 2014, Scribd added audiobooks to its subscription library. Wired noted that this was the first subscription service to offer unlimited access to audiobooks, and "it represents a much larger shift in the way digital content is consumed over the net." In April 2015, the company expanded its audiobook catalog in a deal with Penguin Random House. This added 9,000 audiobooks to its platform including titles from authors like Lena Dunham, John Grisham, Gillian Flynn, and George R.R. Martin.


title: Scribd

text: In February 2015, Scribd introduced comics to its subscription service. The company added 10,000 comics and graphic novels from publishers including Marvel, Archie, Boom! Studios, Dynamite, IDW, and Valiant. These included series such as "Guardians of the Galaxy", "Daredevil", "X-O Manowar", and "The Avengers". However, in December 2016, comics were eliminated from the service due to low demand.


title: Scribd

text: In February 2010, Scribd unveiled its first mobile plans for e-readers and smartphones. In April 2010 Scribd launched a new feature called "Readcast", which allows automatic sharing of documents on Facebook and Twitter. Also in April 2010, Scribd announced its integration of Facebook social plug-ins at the Facebook f8 Developer Conference.


title: Scribd

text: Scribd rolled out a redesign on September 13, 2010, to become, according to TechCrunch, "the social network for reading".


title: Scribd

text: In October 2013, Scribd launched its e-book subscription service, allowing readers to pay a flat monthly fee in exchange for unlimited access to all of Scribd's book titles.


title: Scribd

text: In August 2020, Scribd announced its acquisition of the LinkedIn-owned SlideShare for an undisclosed amount.


title: Scribd

text: The company was initially funded with US$120,000 from Y Combinator in 2006, and received over US$3.7 million in June 2007 from Redpoint Ventures and The Kinsey Hills Group. In December 2008, the company raised US$9 million in a second round of funding led by Charles River Ventures with re-investment from Redpoint Ventures and Kinsey Hills Group. David O. Sacks, former PayPal COO and founder of Yammer and Geni, joined Scribd's board of directors in January 2010.


title: Scribd

text: In January 2011, Scribd raised an additional US$13 million in a round led by MLC Investments of Australia and SVB Capital.


title: Scribd

text: In January 2015, the company raised US$22 million in new funding from Khosla Ventures with partner Keith Rabois joining the Scribd board of directors.


title: Scribd

text: In July 2008, Scribd began using iPaper, a rich document format similar to PDF and built for the web, which allows users to embed documents into a web page. iPaper was built with Adobe Flash, allowing it to be viewed the same across different operating systems (Windows, Mac OS, and Linux) without conversion, as long as the reader has Flash installed (although Scribd has announced non-Flash support for the iPhone). All major document types can be formatted into iPaper including Word docs, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, OpenDocument documents, OpenOffice.org XML documents, and PostScript files.


title: Scribd

text: All iPaper documents are hosted on Scribd. Scribd allows published documents to either be private or open to the larger Scribd community. The iPaper document viewer is also embeddable in any website or blog, making it simple to embed documents in their original layout regardless of file format. Scribd iPaper required Flash cookies to be enabled, which is the default setting in Flash.


title: Scribd

text: On May 5, 2010, Scribd announced that they would be converting the entire site to HTML5 at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. TechCrunch reported that Scribd is migrating away from Flash to HTML5. "Scribd co-founder and chief technology officer Jared Friedman tells me: 'We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page.'"


title: Scribd

text: Scribd has its own API to integrate external/third-party applications, but is no longer offering new API accounts.


title: Scribd

text: Since 2010, Scribd has been available on mobile phones and e-readers, in addition to personal computers. As of December 2013, Scribd became available on app stores and various mobile devices.


title: Scribd

text: Scribd has been accused of copyright infringement. In 2007, one year after its inception, Scribd was served with 25 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices. In March 2009, The "Guardian" writes, "Harry Potter author [J.K. Rowling] is among writers shocked to discover their books available as free downloads. Neil Blair, Rowling’s lawyer, said the Harry Potter downloads were 'unauthorised and unlawful'...Rowling's novels aren't the only ones to be available from Scribd. A quick search throws up novels from Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Jeffrey Archer, Ken Follett, Philippa Gregory, and J.R.R. Tolkien." In September 2009, American author Elaine Scott alleged that Scribd "shamelessly profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors". Her attorneys sought class action status in their efforts to win damages from Scribd for allegedly "egregious copyright infringement" and accused it of calculated copyright infringement for profit. The suit was dropped in July 2010.


title: Scribd

text: In March 2009, the passwords of several Comcast customers were leaked on Scribd. The passwords were later removed when the news was published by "The New York Times".


title: Scribd

text: In July 2010, Gigaom reported that the script of "The Social Network" (2010) movie was uploaded and leaked on Scribd; it was promptly taken down per Sony's DMCA request.


title: Scribd

text: Following a decision of the Istanbul 12th Criminal Court of Peace, dated March 8, 2013, access to Scribd is blocked for Internet users in Turkey.


title: Scribd

text: In July 2014, Scribd was sued by Disability Rights Advocates (represented by Haben Girma), on behalf of the National Federation of the Blind and a blind Vermont resident, for allegedly failing to provide access to blind readers, in violation of the Americans with Disability Act. Scribd moved to dismiss, arguing that the ADA only applied to physical locations. In March 2015, the U.S. District Court of Vermont ruled that the ADA covered online businesses as well. A settlement agreement was reached, with Scribd agreeing to provide content accessible to blind readers by the end of 2017.


title: Scribd

text: To counteract the uploading of unauthorized content, Scribd created BookID, an automated copyright protection system that helps authors and publishers identify unauthorized use of their works on Scribd. This technology works by analyzing documents for semantic data, metadata, images, and other elements and creates an encoded "fingerprint" of the copyrighted work.


title: Mike Muir

text: Michael Allen Muir (born March 14, 1963) is an American singer who is the lead vocalist and the only sole continuous member of Los Angeles-based bands Suicidal Tendencies, Los Cycos, and Infectious Grooves. He has also released several solo albums under his nickname Cyco Miko. Muir's trademark is wearing bandanas, jerseys with the number 13, and hats with block-style letters that read "suicidal".


title: Mike Muir

text: Born in Venice, Los Angeles, and raised in Santa Monica, Mike Muir is the younger brother of Jim Muir of the Dogtown skateboarding team. Jim exposed Mike to metal music as well as skateboarding. Muir attended Santa Monica College after being kicked out of school in the 10th grade.


title: Mike Muir

text: Muir has cited bands such as the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Black Sabbath, UFO, AC/DC, Van Halen, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Led Zeppelin, and Kiss as his early musical influences, and has said that he was introduced to funk music by former bandmate Robert Trujillo. Muir incorporated funk influences into a few songs by Suicidal Tendencies and into his funk metal side project, Infectious Grooves.


title: Mike Muir

text: Muir formed Suicidal Tendencies in 1980 when he was 17 years old. It originally consisted of Muir on vocals, Mike Ball on guitar, Carlos "Egie" Egert on drums, and Mike Dunnigan on bass. There were several lineup changes before Muir hired Grant Estes, Louiche Mayorga and Amery Smith on guitar, bass and drums respectively. In 1983, they released their self-titled album, with success sparked by the anthem song "Institutionalized", which would become one of the first hardcore punk videos to receive substantial airplay on MTV. They have since played tours and festivals worldwide. When No Mercy guitarist Mike Clark was hired as the band's second guitarist in 1987, Suicidal Tendencies began making a change from punk to metal, thus creating what would become crossover thrash, and later began adding funk influences to their music. Robert Trujillo, who was the bassist for Suicidal Tendencies from 1989 to 1995, was responsible for turning Muir on to funk music, and the pair would eventually form Infectious Grooves to play more funk oriented music.


title: Mike Muir

text: Cited as one of the most important crossover thrash groups, Suicidal Tendencies was active until 1995, but reunited a year later. Suicidal Tendencies has been touring or playing selected shows almost every year, and until the 2013 release of their ninth studio album "13", they had not released an album containing new music in over a decade. Between the releases of "Free Your Soul and Save My Mind" and "13", however, the band had debuted new material on stage and through compilation releases on a regular basis.


title: Mike Muir

text: Muir formed Los Cycos in 1984 during Suicidal's first year of their four-year recording hiatus. Current guitarist Jon Nelson left the group and Suicidal Tendencies were banned from playing L.A. shows, largely due to an incident at Perkins Palace where their audience tore out the first 10 rows, making it impossible for promoters to obtain insurance if Suicidal was on the bill. Muir started the label Suicidal Records with bassist Louiche Mayorga. Los Cycos originally consisted of Mike Muir (vocals), Bob Heathcote (bass), Anthony "Bob" Gallo (guitars) and Amery Smith (drums). After a few rehearsals, Amery Smith left the line up, along with bandmate Jon Nelson to start their own band (the Brood). Los Cycos eventually included: Grant Estes on lead guitar, Gallo went to (rhythm), and original choices Bob Heathcote and Amery Smith were replaced by Louiche Mayorga (bass) and No Mercy's Sal Troy (drums). Rehearsals continued in preparation for their debut recording for "Welcome to Venice" on Suicidal Records. With the final line-up established and two songs "It's Not Easy" and "A Little Each Day", Los Cycos was born. "Welcome to Venice" was the first record to be released on Suicidal Records, and the album also included local Venice, Los Angeles bands Suicidal Tendencies, Beowülf, No Mercy, and Excel. Unfortunately the original masters were lost in a fire and no effort has been made to release the material digitally. Mike Muir's vocals can be heard on the Suicidal Tendencies cut "Look Up...(The Boys are Back) and the Los Cycos track "It's Not Easy". Grant Estes played all guitars on the recordings.


title: Mike Muir

text: Muir has released solo albums under his nickname "Cyco Miko" and has sung for No Mercy, replacing original singer Kevin Guercio, who sang for the band on the "Welcome to Venice" compilation. Cyco Miko released three albums on the record label Suicidal Records. The album "Schizophrenic Born Again Problem Child" was released in 2001, following up 1996's "Lost My Brain! (Once Again)". In October 2011 a third Cyco Miko album was released worldwide, featuring previously unreleased and newly written music from Cyco Miko, Suicidal Tendencies and Infectious Grooves. The album entitled "The Mad Mad Muir Musical Tour - Part 1" featured current Suicidal Tendencies band members as well as performances by Fletcher Dragge, Robert Trujillo, Brooks Wackerman, bassist Thundercat (Stephen Bruner) and saxophonist Kamasi Washington. No Mercy released only one album with Muir, "Widespread Bloodshed/Love Runs Red" on Suicidal Records.


title: Mike Muir

text: In 1989, not long after Robert Trujillo joined Suicidal Tendencies, Muir and Trujillo formed Infectious Grooves, a funk metal band that often brought out a goofier type of humor: their albums contain comedy skits by a reptilian lover named Aladdin Sarsippius Sulemenagic Jackson III. To date, the Infectious Grooves have released four albums.


title: Mike Muir

text: Muir provided vocals on the P.O.D. song "Kaliforn-Eye-A" from their 2008 album "When Angels & Serpents Dance".


title: Mike Muir

text: In May 2021, Muir along with Tim Armstrong (Rancid), Matt Freeman (Rancid), Fletcher Dragge (Pennywise), and Byron McMacken (Pennywise) formed a punk rock supergroup called The Crew. The band's first single, "One Voice", was released on Epitaph Records.


title: Mike Muir

text: In 2003 Muir had his first of two back surgeries for a ruptured, herniated disc. The other, in 2005, caused him to cancel Brazilian festival dates and Suicidal shows. Muir is married and has three children. In early 2011 he returned to the United States after living in Queensland, Australia for a short period of time.


title: Mike Muir

text: On March 7, 1996, Muir fought Simon Woodstock in a celebrity boxing match on the Action Sports channel. Muir lost to Woodstock.


title: Mike Muir

text: Muir was a longtime friend to Texan film actor Bill Paxton. The two worked with each other for the LA Times in the late 1970s before Muir formed Suicidal Tendencies and Paxton started his career in Hollywood. Following Paxton's death in 2017, Muir expressed in a tribute his heartfelt condolences to the late actor on Suicidal Tendencies' Facebook page.


title: Mike Muir

text: Muir is known for being outspoken on his views about the music industry and society. He has long been an opponent of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), and has reflected this in interviews and a few songs (namely "You Can't Bring Me Down" and "Lovely"). Muir was involved in a near-violent feud with Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine during the European "Clash of the Titans" tour, but the two have since reconciled and are apparently now on friendly terms.


title: Mike Muir

text: Muir has criticized the band Rage Against the Machine, who are well known for expressing anti-corporate, left-wing politics in their lyrics, but are signed with Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony, a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation. The Infectious Grooves song "Do What I Tell Ya!", from their album "Groove Family Cyco", mocks the band for this contradiction. Muir later stated that Rage Against the Machine's guitarist, Tom Morello, provoked the feud by attacking Suicidal Tendencies.


title: Celeste Holm

text: Holm won an Academy Award for her performance in Elia Kazan's "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947), and was nominated for her roles in "Come to the Stable" (1949) and "All About Eve" (1950). She also is known for her performances in "The Snake Pit" (1948), "A Letter to Three Wives" (1949), and "High Society" (1956). She is also known for originating the role of Ado Annie in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma!" (1943).


title: Celeste Holm

text: Born and raised in Manhattan, Holm was an only child. Her mother, Jean Parke, was an American portrait artist and author. Her father, Theodor Holm, was a Norwegian businessman whose company provided marine adjustment services for Lloyd's of London. Because of her parents' occupations, she traveled often during her youth and attended various schools in the Netherlands, France and the United States. She began high school at the University School for Girls in Chicago, and then transferred to the Francis W. Parker School (Chicago) where she performed in many school stage productions and graduated as a member of the class of 1935. She then studied drama at the University of Chicago before becoming a stage actress in the late 1930s.


title: Celeste Holm

text: Holm's first professional theatrical role was in a production of "Hamlet" starring Leslie Howard. She first appeared on Broadway in a small part in "Gloriana" (1938), a comedy which lasted for only five performances, but her first major part on Broadway was in William Saroyan's revival of "The Time of Your Life" (1940) as Mary L. with fellow newcomer Gene Kelly. The role that got her the most recognition from critics and audiences was as Ado Annie in the premiere production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" in 1943.


title: Celeste Holm

text: After she starred in the Broadway production of "Bloomer Girl", 20th Century Fox signed Holm to a movie contract in 1946. She made her film debut that same year in "Three Little Girls in Blue", making a startling entrance in a "Technicolor red" dress singing "Always a Lady," a belting Ado Annie-type song, although the character was different—a lady. For her role in "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947), she won an Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. However, after another supporting role in "All About Eve", Holm realized she preferred live theater to movie work, and only accepted a few select film roles over the next decade. The most successful of these were the comedy "The Tender Trap" (1955) and the musical "High Society" (1956), both of which co-starred Frank Sinatra. She starred as a professor-turned-reporter in New York City in the CBS television series "Honestly, Celeste!" (fall 1954) and was thereafter a panelist on "Who Pays?" (1959). She also appeared ABC's "The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom".


title: Celeste Holm

text: In 1958, she starred as a reporter in an unsold television pilot called "The Celeste Holm Show", based on the book "No Facilities for Women". In 1965, she played the Fairy Godmother alongside Lesley Ann Warren in the CBS production of "Cinderella". In 1970–71, she was featured on the NBC sitcom "Nancy", with Renne Jarrett, John Fink and Robert F. Simon. In the storyline, Holm played Abby Townsend, the press secretary of the First Lady of the United States and the chaperone of Jarrett's character, Nancy Smith, the President's daughter.


title: Celeste Holm

text: During the 1970s and 1980s, Holm did more screen acting, with roles in films such as "Tom Sawyer" and "Three Men and a Baby", and in television series (often as a guest star) such as "Columbo", "The Eleventh Hour", "Archie Bunker's Place" and "Falcon Crest". In 1979, she played the role of First Lady Florence Harding in the television mini-series, "Backstairs at the White House". Holm also starred in the musical "The Utter Glory of Morrissey Hall," which flopped after a single performance (and seven previews) on Broadway"." In December 1981 Holm appeared in the lead role in the British premiere of Kurt Weill's "Lady in the Dark" at the Nottingham Playhouse. She was a regular on the ABC soap opera "Loving", appearing first in 1986 in the role of Lydia Woodhouse and again as Isabelle Dwyer Alden #2 from 1991 to 1992. She last appeared on television in the CBS television series "Promised Land" (1996–99).


title: Celeste Holm

text: A life member of The Actors Studio, Holm received numerous honors during her lifetime, including the 1968 Sarah Siddons Award for distinguished achievement in Chicago theatre; she was appointed to the National Arts Council by then-President Ronald Reagan, appointed Knight, First Class of the Order of St. Olav by King Olav of Norway in 1979, and inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1992. She remained active for social causes as a spokesperson for UNICEF, and for occasional professional engagements. From 1995 she was Chairman of the Board of Arts Horizons, a not-for-profit arts-in-education organization. In 1995, Holm was inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame.


title: Celeste Holm

text: In 2006, Holm was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the SunDeis Film Festival at Brandeis University.


title: Celeste Holm

text: Holm was a guest at the 2009 Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in Aberdeen, Maryland. Some of the movies in which she appeared were screened at the festival, and the unaired television pilot for "Meet Me in St. Louis" was shown. She received an honorary award during the dinner banquet at the close of the event.


title: Celeste Holm

text: Holm's first marriage was at age 19 to Ralph Nelson in 1936. The marriage ended in 1939. Their son is Internet pioneer and sociologist Ted Nelson.


title: Celeste Holm

text: Holm married Francis Emerson Harding Davies, an English auditor, on January 7, 1940. Davies was a Roman Catholic, and she was received into the Roman Catholic Church for the purposes of their 1940 wedding; the marriage was dissolved on May 8, 1945.


title: Celeste Holm

text: From 1946 to 1952, Holm was married to airline public relations executive A. Schuyler Dunning, with whom she had a second son, businessman Daniel Dunning.


title: Celeste Holm

text: In 1961, Holm married actor Wesley Addy. The couple lived together on her family farm in Washington Township, Morris County, New Jersey. He died in 1996.


title: Celeste Holm

text: On April 29, 2004, her 87th birthday, Holm married opera singer Frank Basile, who was 41 years old. The couple met in October 1999 at a fundraiser for which Basile was hired to sing. Soon after their marriage, Holm and Basile sued to overturn the irrevocable trust that was created in 2002 by Daniel Dunning, Holm's younger son. The trust was ostensibly set up to shelter Holm's financial assets from taxes though Basile contended the real purpose of the trust was to keep him away from her money. The lawsuit began a five-year battle, which cost millions of dollars, and according to an article in "The New York Times", left Holm and her husband with a "fragile hold" on their apartment, which Holm purchased for $10,000 cash in 1953 from her film earnings, and which in 2011 was believed to be worth at least $10,000,000.


title: Celeste Holm

text: According to Basile, Holm had been treated for memory loss since 2002, suffered skin cancer, bleeding ulcers and a collapsed lung, and had hip replacements and pacemakers.


title: Celeste Holm

text: In June 2012, Holm was admitted to New York's Roosevelt Hospital with dehydration, where she suffered a heart attack on July 13, 2012; she died two days later at her Central Park West apartment, aged 95.


title: Celeste Holm

text: In 1960, Holme received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for her work in Motion Pictures located at 1500 Vine Street, and the other for her work on Television at the location 6821 Hollywood Blvd.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Sir Bradley Marc Wiggins, CBE (born 28 April 1980) is a British former professional road and track racing cyclist, who competed professionally between 2001 and 2016. He began his cycling career on the track, but later made the transition to road cycling. He won world titles in four disciplines (Madison, individual pursuit, team pursuit and road time trial), and Olympic gold in three (individual pursuit, team pursuit and road time trial). He is the only rider to have won both World and Olympic championships on both the track and the road as well as winning the Tour de France. He has worn the leader's jersey in each of the three Grand Tours of cycling and held the world record in team pursuit on multiple occasions. He won a gold medal at four successive Olympic Games from 2004 to 2016, and held the record as Great Britain's most decorated Olympian with 8 medals until Jason Kenny won his 9th in 2021. He is the only rider to win both the Tour de France and Olympic Gold in the same year, winning them a week apart in 2012. During his career and afterwards he faced a series of 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.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: 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.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: On the road, Wiggins turned professional in 2001 but made it his focus from 2008. Initially viewed as a time trial specialist and as a rouleur, he showed his ability in stage races when he came fourth in the 2009 Tour de France; he was later promoted to third after Lance Armstrong's results were annulled in 2012. He signed with the newly formed in 2010, and in 2011 he 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. In 2014, he won gold in the time trial at the road world championships, and founded the cycling team. Wiggins returned to the track at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, and in June 2015 he set a new hour record with a distance of . 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 on 28 December 2016.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins was appointed a CBE in 2009. Following his success in 2012, Wiggins was the subject of further honours and awards: the Vélo d'Or award for best rider of the year, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award and a knighthood as part of the 2013 New Year Honours.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: On 5 March 2018, the British House of Commons Committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport published their report called "Combatting doping in sport". They concluded "inter alia" that Team Sky had used the powerful banned corticosteroid 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." The report concluded that "we believe that drugs were being used by Team Sky, within the World Anti-Doping Agency rules, to enhance the performance of riders, and not just to treat medical need."


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins was born on 28 April 1980 in Ghent, Flanders, Belgium, to an Australian father, Gary Wiggins, and a British mother, Linda. His father lived in Belgium as a professional cyclist. His father left the family when Wiggins was two. Wiggins moved with his mother to her parents' house in Villiers Road, Willesden Green, north-west London, then to a Church Commission flat at Dibdin House estate in neighbouring Maida Vale. He was educated at St Augustine's junior school and then St Augustine's Church of England High School in Kilburn, where his mother was a secretary. He has a younger half-brother, Ryan, from his mother and her partner Brendan. Brendan and Linda separated when Wiggins was in his late teens.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Football was his first passion and he was an Arsenal fan, although he would watch rivals Tottenham Hotspur play because his friends supported them. He discovered cycling when his mother told him to watch the television coverage of the individual pursuit final of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, which Briton Chris Boardman won. She explained it was one of the events at which his father had been successful. He watched the rest of the Olympics and fell in love with cycling and the Olympics itself.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In 1992, aged 12, he entered his first race, the West London Challenge 92, on the unopened A312 dual carriageway in Hayes, west London. Later that year he broke a collarbone in a road accident. He received £1,700 compensation for his injuries. He gave his mother £700 and used the rest to buy his first racing bicycle. "At 12", he recalled, "I told my art teacher, I'm going to be Olympic champion, I'm going to wear the yellow jersey in the Tour." He joined the Archer Road Club, where his father had been a member in the late 1970s. He raced at Herne Hill Velodrome and on the road around Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. He gained domestic sponsorship from Condor Cycles's Olympia Sport and then Team Brite. He represented Westminster in the London Youth Games as a teenager. In recognition of his early achievements, 2010 he was inducted into the London Youth Games Hall of Fame.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: At 16, he won the time trial at the 1996 junior national track championships at Saffron Lane sports centre in Leicester. Selectors invited him to train at weekends at Manchester Velodrome. After leaving school he enrolled on a BTEC foundation course in business studies, but left due to cycling commitments. At the 1997 junior national track championships he won the one-kilometre time trial, individual pursuit, points race and scratch race. He was the only British competitor for the 1997 junior track world championships in Cape Town, coming 16th in the individual pursuit and fourth in the points race.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: His breakthrough came in June 1998, winning the three-kilometre individual pursuit at the junior track world championships in Cuba, aged 18. The following week, he retained his titles at the junior national track championships in Manchester. He represented England at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, finishing fourth in the individual pursuit, and was a member of the team that won a silver medal in the team pursuit, his first senior medal. He became a full-time Lottery-funded athlete, with a grant of nearly £20,000 a year (equivalent to £ in 2022).


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In 1999, he began training with the Great Britain team pursuit squad and rode the PruTour – now known as the Tour of Britain, his first stage race at that level. In October he competed in the track world championships in Berlin, coming fifth in the team pursuit, and with partner Rob Hayles, came tenth in the Madison, securing qualification for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. At the Olympics he won a bronze medal in the team pursuit, beating France in the bronze medal match, and came fourth in the Madison with Hayles. In October 2000, he took silver in the team pursuit at the track world championships in Manchester, losing to Germany in the final by under half a second.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In 2001, he signed for the Linda McCartney Racing Team, a British professional road cycling team, but it disbanded after internal problems. He was briefly seen in Sigma Sport colours after the collapse of the Linda McCartney team, but then secured further lottery funding, and began racing for the British national team. He came second in the prologue of the Tour of Rhodes, two seconds behind Fabian Cancellara of , before winning the general classification in the Cinturón a Mallorca and Flèche du Sud. In September he crashed his bike, requiring two metal pins in his right wrist. Two weeks later he went to the track world championships in Antwerp, managing seventh place in the individual pursuit and consecutive silver in the team pursuit.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: He joined the French team in 2002, relocating to Nantes, and soon became homesick, finding it a huge contrast to the British Cycling set-up. At the Commonwealth Games in Manchester he won silver medals in the individual pursuit, losing to teammate Bradley McGee (Australia) in the final, and team pursuit, beaten by Australia, who set a new world record with a time of three minutes and 59.583 seconds. At the track world championships in Copenhagen, he came fifth in the individual pursuit and won a bronze medal in the team pursuit. Wiggins was frustrated with his result in the individual pursuit at the world championships and became disillusioned with his future with . British Cycling then enlisted the newly retired Chris Boardman as his mentor.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In May 2003, Wiggins made his Grand Tour debut at the Giro d'Italia. On the 18th stage he was eliminated from the race, finishing outside of the time limit in a group of 53 riders. In the summer he competed in the track world championships in Stuttgart, qualifying fastest in the individual pursuit, before beating Russia's Alexei Markov in the first round, setting up a place in the final against Australia's Luke Roberts. He beat Roberts by 0.736 seconds to win the gold medal, his first senior world title. He also came away with a silver medal in the team pursuit, beaten by Australia in the final, who broke their own world record with a time of three minutes and 57.280 seconds. In September he won stage one of the Tour de l'Avenir, beating teammate Benoît Vaugrenard and 's Joost Posthuma by 14 seconds. In November he won the Six Days of Ghent with Matthew Gilmore of .


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins signed with for the 2004 season, advised by Boardman, who rode for them his entire professional road career. He began training for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, at first struggling with illness and fitness, he arrived in peak form; he qualified for the individual pursuit with a time of four minutes and 15.165 seconds, an Olympic record and fifth fastest time in history. In the final he beat McGee by over four seconds to win the gold medal. Wiggins was brought in to the team pursuit squad for the first round against France, replacing Bryan Steel, and advanced into the final, where the team were beaten by Australia, settling for the silver medal. Wiggins then partnered Rob Hayles in the Madison. With 90 laps left of the 200, Hayles crashed with Dutchman Robert Slippens, returning after a few laps. They lost a lap to their rivals, but with 30 to go Wiggins attacked, and they regained the lost lap, moving into second place. They lost points in the final sprint, moving them down to third, taking the bronze medal with 12 points, behind Switzerland on 15 and Australia on 22. Wiggins became the first British athlete in 40 years to win three medals at one Games, the last being Mary Rand at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. On 31 December 2004 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2005 New Year Honours, for services to sport.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In early 2005, he revealed his desire to compete in road cycling, and in April won the time trial around the town of Briey in northeastern France, on the second stage of the Circuit de Lorraine. In September he won his first race stage since 2001, stage eight of the Tour de l'Avenir; finishing with teammate Saul Raisin, with third-placed Steve Cummings () coming in three minutes and 24 seconds later. Wiggins competed in the Giro d'Italia, finishing 123rd overall. He came seventh in the time trial at the road world championships in Madrid, one minute and 31 seconds down on winner Michael Rogers of Australia. He moved to for the 2006 season, and was selected to ride in the Tour de France, finishing his first Tour in 124th place.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In March 2007, Wiggins returned to the track for the track world championships in Palma, Majorca, his first appearance at the championships since 2004. In the qualifying round for the individual pursuit, he set his second fastest time since his personal best at the Olympics in Athens, with a time of four minutes and 15.976 seconds; he beat Germany's Robert Bartko in the final to win the gold, catching him after 2750 m. He then went on to win gold in the team pursuit, beating Ukraine in the final. He finished in 13th place in the Madison, with Rob Hayles.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: On the road he won stage one of the Four Days of Dunkirk and the prologue of the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, before competing in the Tour de France and finishing fourth in the prologue in London. On stage six Wiggins launched a solo breakaway after of racing, leading the race for , before being caught by the peloton with remaining. It was seen as a tribute to British rider Tom Simpson, on the 40th anniversary of his death in the 1967 Tour de France, but was a gift to his wife on her birthday, with Wiggins only finding out about the date's significance after the race. He received the stage's combativity award, for the most aggressive rider. withdrew from the race before stage 16 after Cristian Moreni failed a doping test. Wiggins and his teammates were interviewed by police and had their hotel rooms searched. In the aftermath of the positive drug tests on Moreni and on race leader Alexander Vinokourov of , Wiggins spoke out against dopers in the Tour and threw away his kit in a bin in Pau Pyrénées Airport, vowing never to race for the team again.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Despite this Wiggins continued racing for , and in August he won the time trial on stage four of the Tour du Poitou-Charentes. In September, with teammate Michiel Elijzen, he won the Duo Normand, a two-man team time trial over a course of . His season on the road ended riding for Great Britain at the road world championships in Stuttgart, coming tenth in the time trial, two minutes and ten seconds behind winner Cancellara of Switzerland; a result he was disappointed with, after hoping to finish on the podium.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In September he signed for the  – later known as  – for the 2008 season, joining compatriot Mark Cavendish, forming a partnership in the Madison. Their first race was the Six Days of Ghent in November, finishing in tenth place; Wiggins still riding for . Wiggins then made his only appearance for the  – which is separate from the road team – at the Beijing round of the 2007–08 Track World Cup Classics in December, winning gold in the individual pursuit and silver in the Madison with Cavendish.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: For the 2008 season, Wiggins's focus was on the track and on the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, deciding not to compete in the Tour de France. In February he travelled to the United States to train, and rode the Tour of California, coming second in the prologue, behind Cancellara ().


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In March Wiggins competed in the track world championships in Manchester, defending his individual pursuit title by beating Dutchman Jenning Huizenga in the final, his third world title in the discipline. He then won the team pursuit, setting a new world record of three minutes and 56.322 seconds in the final against Denmark. Wiggins was due to partner with Hayles in the Madison, but Hayles failed a routine blood test, and was subsequently banned for two weeks. Cavendish was then brought in as his replacement. At around halfway through the race they appeared to be out of contention, with their closest rivals all gaining a lap; but with 35 laps left to race, Wiggins launched an attack which helped them reach the field ten laps later, taking the lead, due to their superior points they had collected in the sprints. They held on to win the gold medal, finishing with 19 points, ahead of Germany on 13.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins then rode the Tour de Romandie and the Giro d'Italia, as preparation for the Olympics in August. At the Giro he was part of the lead-out train that helped Cavendish win two stages. Wiggins came fourth in the final stage's -long time trial in Milan, six seconds behind teammate Marco Pinotti, finishing the race in 134th place, three hours, one minute and 39 seconds down on overall winner Alberto Contador of .


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: At the Olympics he began the defence of his title in the individual pursuit, qualifying with a time of four minutes and 15.031 seconds, breaking his own Olympic record from 2004. In the semi-final he beat Russia's Alexander Serov, before taking gold in the final against Hayden Roulston of New Zealand, becoming the first rider to defend an Olympic pursuit title successfully. He was a member of the team pursuit that broke the world record in the heats with a time of three minutes and 55.202 seconds. The following day, the team won the gold medal, beating Denmark by 6.7 seconds with another new world record of three minutes and 53.314 seconds, averaging a speed of . He paired with Cavendish in the Madison, and as the reigning world champions, they were favourites for the gold medal, but they only finished ninth. Cavendish felt that Wiggins had not performed to the best of his ability in the Madison.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In September Wiggins joined the American team for the 2009 season. On 14 December he came ninth in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, with 5,633 votes, and was a member of the British cycling team that won the Team of the Year Award. On 31 December he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins switched his focus to road and moved with his family to the city of Girona in north-east Spain, where were based. He started the season in February by helping the team win the opening team time trial of the Tour of Qatar, crossing the line first to take the leaders jersey. In March he came second to Contador in the opening time trial of Paris–Nice, before riding Milan–San Remo and then placing second in the time trial at Critérium International. In April he won the time trial on the final stage of the Three Days of De Panne, twenty seconds ahead of rider Lieuwe Westra in second place, then had top-30 finishes in the Classics: Gent–Wevelgem and Paris–Roubaix. After finishing in 71st position in the Giro d'Italia and taking second place in the -long time trial on the final stage in Rome, he won the Beaumont Trophy, a domestic one-day race in Northumberland, using it as preparation for the Tour de France three weeks later.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins arrived at the Tour de France having lost , and was nicknamed "Twiggo", instead of the usual "Wiggo". He came third in the time trial on stage one in Monaco, 19 seconds behind 's Cancellara and one behind Contador. He then helped to second in stage four's team time trial, despite losing four riders. On stage seven he finished 12th in the first mountain finish and was in fifth place overall at the beginning of the second week. On stage fifteen in Verbier – the second mountain finish, Wiggins finished fifth, rising to third place overall. On stage 17 Contador, Andreas Klöden () and riders Fränk and Andy Schleck attacked on the final climb – the Col de la Colombière, measuring at an average gradient of 8.5%, and was left with 's Lance Armstrong and Vincenzo Nibali of , who let Wiggins do all the work before attacking one-kilometre from the summit. Wiggins failed to gain time on the descent and finished three minutes and seven seconds down on winner Fränk Schleck, dropping to sixth overall.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins moved back up to fourth, after finishing in second place in the time trial on stage 19, finishing in sixth place 42 seconds down on winner Contador. On stage 20 to Mont Ventoux, Wiggins was dropped by the yellow jersey group from the summit, finishing in tenth place and kept fourth overall, three seconds ahead of Fränk Schleck; he held that position in the final stage, equalling Robert Millar's highest ever finish by a British rider in the Tour. In October 2012, following the disqualification of Armstrong, who had originally placed third in the general classification, Wiggins was promoted to third place overall. This decision retroactively gave him the first podium finish by a British rider in Tour de France history.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In September Wiggins won the national time trial championship in Buckinghamshire, and in September at the road world championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland, was on course for a bronze medal in the time trial, until a mechanical problem and a delay getting a replacement bike ended with him finishing in 21st place. In October he ended the season by winning the Herald Sun Tour in Victoria, Australia, after helping teammates for most of the race. He led the race after winning the time trial on stage five in Geelong, beating second-placed teammate Svein Tuft by fourteen seconds.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins had been contracted to ride for Garmin Slipstream again in 2010, but it was announced on 10 December that he was to leave to join , having signed a four-year contract with the new British team.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins began 2010 as a team leader for the first time and his main target was to win the Tour de France. In February he was part of the team that won the opening team time trial of the Tour of Qatar, before taking second place in the time trial on stage four of the Vuelta a Andalucía, behind Alex Rasmussen of . He then went on to finish third at the Vuelta a Murcia in March, behind winner František Raboň of and rider Denis Menchov in second.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In May Wiggins took his first Grand Tour victory on the wet streets of Amsterdam in the opening time trial of the Giro d'Italia, becoming the second Briton to wear the pink jersey after Cavendish in 2009. A series of crashes on the second stage put him 32 seconds behind in the general classification to the new leader Cadel Evans (). Another crash on stage three cost him a further three minutes and 58 seconds. He recovered time on stage 11, finishing fourth, from a group of 56 riders, and lay tenth overall. He faded quickly towards the end of the race, however, losing time in the final stages. He came seventh in the final time trial in Verona. He finished the race 40th overall, one hour, 47 minutes and 58 seconds behind overall winner Ivan Basso of . Throughout the race he told the press he was saving himself for the Tour de France, when asked about his form, but in fact felt physically unfit.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins then went to a training camp in the Alps, testing the mountain stages used for the Tour; he struggled to find his fitness. He made a poor start in the Tour, taking 77th place in the prologue after an early starting position left him exposed to poor conditions. He finished eighth on stage three, as cobblestones troubled a number of favourites, but on stage eight at Morzine-Avoriaz, the first mountain summit finish of the Tour, he could only manage 19th place, losing one minute and 45-second to stage winner Andy Schleck (). The following day he lost more time, coming 13th and losing four minutes and 55 seconds to the main contenders. He finished in 36th place on stage fourteen, falling to 18th overall, 11 minutes and 30 seconds behind race leader Andy Schleck; to the press he described his form as "consistently mediocre". On stage 19's time trial from Bordeaux to Pauillac, he finished in ninth place, three minutes and 33 seconds behind winner Cancellara. Wiggins finished the Tour in 24th place, 39 minutes and seven seconds down on winner Contador and seven places behind teammate Thomas Löfkvist. In February 2012, Contador was found guilty of doping and Wiggins's overall position was upgraded to 23rd.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: He returned to racing in August, at the GP Ouest–France in Plouay. In September he retained his title at the national time trial championships, around the -long course in South Wales, before finishing the season at the Tour of Britain. His season ended at the Giro di Lombardia, where he was forced to abandon following a crash. Over the winter he trained with the Great Britain squad at Manchester Velodrome.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins was team leader of again at the start of 2011. He opted not to enter the Giro d'Italia, concentrating instead on shorter events and the classics before undertaking altitude training to improve his climbing for the Tour de France. His season began at the Tour of Qatar in February, before winning the team pursuit at the Manchester round of the 2009–10 Track World Cup Classics, with a time of three minutes 55.438, the fifth-fastest time. He then came second in the -long time trial on the sixth stage of the Paris–Nice in March, 20 seconds behind Tony Martin of . He finished third overall, behind Martin and rider Andreas Klöden. In April he rode Paris–Roubaix, and then the Tour de Romandie, finishing third in time trial on stage and helped lead-out teammate Ben Swift to victory on the final stage. In March he finished second in the time trial on the third stage of the Critérium International, four seconds down on Klöden. In May he won the -long time trial on stage four of the Bayern–Rundfahrt, beating 's Cancellara by 33 seconds, and finished the event in 14th place overall, while also helping teammate Geraint Thomas to win the event.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: He then went for altitude training in the Alps, in preparation for the Tour. He took the overall lead in the Critérium du Dauphiné after finishing second in the time trial on stage three. On the final three mountain stages, Wiggins maintained his lead over second-placed Evans to win the race, at that time his biggest victory on the road. In June Wiggins won the national road race championship in Northumberland. On the seventh stage of the Tour, a crash around from the finish in Châteauroux forced Wiggins to retire from the race with a broken collarbone.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: After he had recovered from his injuries, confirmed that Wiggins would ride in the Vuelta a España for the first time, as well as in the road world championships. Wiggins also confirmed that he would take part the Tour in 2012, even though the Olympics would follow soon after. The Vuelta and the world championships were seen as a dress rehearsal for 2012. He had a difficult start to the Vuelta, as finished 42 seconds behind winners in the opening team time trial in Benidorm, but a strong first week brought him back into contention, leaving him twentieth overall after stage eight. On stage nine, Wiggins and teammate Chris Froome attacked on the final climb to finish fourth and fifth respectively, gaining time on rider Joaquim Rodríguez, Michele Scarponi () and other contenders. Wiggins was expected to take the overall lead in the time trial on the following day, but Froome confounded expectations by finishing second on the stage, and Wiggins only rose to third overall. He eventually took the lead after the rest day. Stage fourteen saw Wiggins and Froome gaining on most of their rivals. However, Wiggins lost the lead to 's Juan José Cobo on stage fifteen, when he finished fifth on the climb up the Angliru and dropped to third in the standings, behind Froome, who was second. Wiggins finished the Vuelta in third place – his first podium finish in a Grand Tour. In July 2019 Wiggins was retrospectively promoted to second place in the Vuelta after the UCI stripped Cobo of the win for an anti-doping violation.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In September he competed in the road world championships in Copenhagen, he won the silver medal in the time trial, finishing one minute and fifteen seconds behind Germany's Martin, and four seconds ahead of reigning champion Cancellara (Switzerland) in third. Four days later, he was part of the Great Britain team that set up Cavendish's victory in the road race; Wiggins took over lead on the final lap of 17 around the circuit, setting a high pace to chase down the breakaway and stop attacks from developing.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In 2012 Wiggins continued to focus on road racing. The individual pursuit was removed from the programme at the Olympics later in the year, and in December 2011 coach Rod Ellingworth told "The Guardian", "The chances of him doing the team pursuit are really slim now". He began his 2012 season with third place in the Volta ao Algarve, including victory in the concluding time trial, edging out world champion Martin () by less than a second.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In March Wiggins finished second in the opening time trial of the Paris–Nice, one second behind 's Gustav Larsson, who avoided the wet conditions, unlike Wiggins and the other favourites that set off later in the day. The following day he took the lead in the race after being part of a 30-man breakaway as the peloton split into echelons. He held the lead for the rest of the event, winning the final stage, a time-trial on the Col d'Èze, to win the race by eight seconds overall and become the first British rider to win the race since Tom Simpson in 1967. His final stage victory was also good enough to give him the points classification. Wiggins's time is the fastest time for the traditional time-trial on the Col d'Èze.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: On the stage one of the Tour de Romandie in April, Wiggins took a rare sprint victory from a group of 59 riders. He lost the jersey to rider Luis León Sánchez after Sánchez won two consecutive stages, but won the final time trial, despite suffering a dropped chain, to take the overall victory and become the first Briton to win the race in its 65-year history.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In June Wiggins competed in the Critérium du Dauphiné, and began the defence of his title with a second-place finish in the prologue, one second behind 's Luke Durbridge. He took the overall lead the following day, after Durbridge was dropped on one of the stage's six climbs. Wiggins won the fourth stage of the race, a time trial over a course of , 34 seconds ahead of Martin, his nearest rival, extending his lead over him to 38 seconds. He held the lead to the end, eventually winning by over a minute, with teammate Rogers in second place.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins entered the Tour de France as one of the favourites to win it. Wiggins began the Tour with second place in the prologue, behind Cancellara of . He took over the yellow jersey by finishing third on stage seven, the first mountaintop finish, becoming the fifth British rider to wear the jersey, and first since David Millar in 2000. Wiggins won the time trial on stage nine. On stage ten, he and his team staved off an attack by Nibali on the descent of the Col du Grand Colombier, leading Nibali to accuse Wiggins of disrespecting him. Wiggins extended his lead on stage 11 after Froome helped him to bridge across to his rivals, who had attacked on the finishing climb to La Toussuire. Froome accelerated about from the finish, and was ordered via his team radio to wait for his leader.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: During stage fourteen, a mountain stage, a spectator threw carpet tacks onto the narrow road at the top of the Mur de Péguère climb. Several riders suffered punctures, including Evans, the defending champion, who lost approximately two minutes while his team repaired his bicycle. Wiggins and his fellow members of emerged without a puncture. Believing that a puncture resulting from an unfortunate incident should not determine the fate of a competitor, Wiggins then had his teammates and the rest of the peloton slow down to allow Evans and other affected cyclists to catch up. It was perceived as a generous act of sportsmanship and Wiggins was called ""Le Gentleman"" as a result. On stage 16, Wiggins and Froome were able to follow attacks by Nibali on the final climb of the day and finished with the same time as the Italian. On stage 17, the final mountain stage, Froome and Wiggins finished together in second and third place respectively, with Nibali coming in 19 seconds later. Wiggins won the time trial on stage 19, giving him a lead of three minutes and 21 seconds at the start of the final stage. On that stage, Wiggins helped teammate Cavendish achieve his fourth consecutive victory on the Champs-Élysées and confirmed his own overall victory in the process. Wiggins became the first, and is currently the only person in history to win the Paris–Nice, the Tour de Romandie, the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de France in a single season.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins was selected to participate in two road cycling events at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London – the time trial and the road race. Wiggins finished 103rd in the road race. Wiggins won gold in the time trial ahead of Martin of Germany and Froome of Britain. By doing so he became the most decorated British Olympian, with seven medals, surpassing the six won by Sir Steve Redgrave. This record was soon shared with Sir Chris Hoy, who also obtained his seventh Olympic medal in 2012. Wiggins entered the "Guinness World Records", becoming the first cyclist to win an Olympic gold medal and the Tour de France in the same year. Wiggins's boyhood idol Miguel Indurain won five consecutive Tours between 1991 and 1995, and won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins returned to racing at the Tour of Britain in September, pulling out on the sixth stage with a stomach bug. The road race at the road world championships in Limburg, Netherlands, was his last of the season. In October he was awarded the prestigious "Vélo d'Or" trophy in recognition of his achievements in 2012. In November he was involved in a road accident and taken to hospital with suspected broken ribs, but was released next day with only minor injuries. In December he won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award with 492,064 (30.25%) of the votes cast. Wiggins was knighted in the 2013 New Years Honours for services to cycling, although he claimed he would use the title for 'comedy purposes', stating that he felt "a little bit inferior" to others receiving knighthoods saying "I've won a bike race, you know, and I feel a little bit inferior to everyone", saying "I was just talking to some of the other people getting stuff, and asking them what they've been honoured for, and they're historic things, ground-breaking sciences or whatever". He was among the nominees for the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsman of the Year, with Jamaican athlete Usain Bolt taking the prize.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: It was widely expected that Wiggins would ride to retain his Tour de France title in 2013. However, in February he asserted that his focus for the season would be the Giro d'Italia, after which he would ride the Tour de France in support of teammate Froome. In April he let it be known that he desired to win another Tour, and had hopes of achieving the Tour and Giro double – a feat that has not been achieved since Marco Pantani in 1998.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins participated in a winter training camp in Mallorca. His first race of the season was the Tour of Oman in February. On the first stage he was caught behind a crash, the time delay pushing him back to the back of the field. For the remainder of the race Wiggins helped Froome, who won the overall classification. Wiggins opted not to defend his title at the Paris–Nice, or ride the Tirreno-Adriatico, instead participating in a training camp on Mount Teide in Tenerife. He returned to action at the Volta a Catalunya in March, finishing the race in fifth place overall, 54 seconds behind winner Dan Martin of .


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In April Wiggins rode the four-day Giro del Trentino in Northern Italy as preparation for the Giro d'Italia. The first day's race schedule consisted of a road race followed by a team time trial. An unexpected breakaway in the road race caused Wiggins to lose over six minutes. However he led the team to victory later in the day during the team time trial. On stage two he cut his deficit to race leader Maxime Bouet of in half, lifting Wiggins into the top-five overall. On the fourth and final stage Wiggins suffered a mechanical problem at the foot of the final climb. He ended up finishing the race in fifth place, one minute and 40 seconds down on winner Nibali ().


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins entered the Giro d'Italia as one of the favourites for the general classification. won the stage two team time trial on the island of Ischia, covering the distance of 14 seconds quicker than Nibali's squad. On stage four Wiggins lost 17 seconds after being delayed by a crash within the final , dropping him in the standings from second to sixth. A wet stage seven saw Wiggins crash while making a descent some from the finish, placing him in difficulty. Teammates Rigoberto Urán and Sergio Henao helped pace him back toward the leaders, but could not close the gap. Wiggins finished 90 seconds down on the race favourites, dropping him out of the race's top 20. In the following stage, a time trial, Wiggins placed second to compatriot Alex Dowsett of . A bike change compelled by a puncture cost Wiggins some time, and he ended up finishing the race ten seconds down on Dowsett. Wiggins struggled on the wet roads of stage nine, losing touch with the peloton on the descent of the Vallombrosa some from the finish. A group of teammates helped pace him back, and the gap was closed. Following stage 11 Wiggins revealed that he was suffering from a chest infection. He withdrew from the race the following day, after losing over three minutes on the day's stage.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: The presence of a knee injury was disclosed to the public on 31 May, which forced Wiggins to forgo defending his title in the Tour de France. He subsequently suggested he may never ride the Tour again. He returned to racing at the Tour de Pologne, winning stage seven's time trial, 56 seconds ahead of second placed Cancellara.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In September, Wiggins led at his home race, the Tour of Britain. He won the time trial on stage three on roads around Knowsley Safari Park, close to his home in Lancashire. He held the lead for the rest of the week to win the race for the first time, and take his first stage race victory of the season. The following week at the world championships, he took the silver medal in the time trial, behind winner Tony Martin and ahead of Cancellara in a repeat of the 2011 podium. Wiggins was also selected to ride the road race, but abandoned after one lap, and was soon followed by the other British riders as none finished the race.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins had stated that his main targets for 2014 were the Paris–Roubaix one day Classic, the Tour of California and the road world championships, as well as riding the Tour de France in support of Chris Froome.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: Wiggins rode the Tour of Flanders as a replacement for the injured Ian Stannard, and finished 32nd, one minute 43 seconds behind the winner Fabian Cancellara, having helped Geraint Thomas on his way to eighth. Wiggins contested Paris–Roubaix for the first time since 2011, becoming the first former Tour de France winner to compete at the race since Greg LeMond in 1992, and secured ninth position, his only top ten finish in a monument as part of a group twenty seconds down on race winner Niki Terpstra.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: At the Tour of California, Wiggins won the time trial on stage two by a margin of 40 seconds over second placed Rohan Dennis () to move into the overall lead which he would keep for the rest of the race. Despite that good result, Wiggins was not selected by his team to be riding the Tour de France, prompting his return to the track cycling team as preparation for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: At the Commonwealth Games in July, Wiggins participated in the 4000m team pursuit with Steven Burke, Ed Clancy and Andy Tennant, managing to win the silver medal. The following day Wiggins announced that he was "done with the road" and that he would likely never ride a grand tour again. He did not rule out some road events but wants to concentrate his training on preparation for the team pursuit at the 2016 Summer Olympics.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In September Wiggins rode the Tour of Britain, winning the final time trial in London and ending the race in third overall behind the winner, 's Dylan van Baarle, and Michał Kwiatkowski (). Wiggins then won gold in the time trial at the world road championships in Ponferrada, Spain, with a winning margin of 26 seconds over Tony Martin over the course.


title: Bradley Wiggins

text: In January 2015 it was confirmed that Wiggins had signed a contract extension with Team Sky to the end of April 2015, with a focus on attempting to win Paris–Roubaix, before transferring to his newly founded team in order to prepare alongside other members of the British track endurance squad for the team pursuit at the 2016 Summer Olympics. It was also confirmed that he would attempt to break the hour record in 2015. In March he confirmed that he would make his debut with his eponymous team at the inaugural Tour de Yorkshire at the start of May.