He might be all systems for Rio 2016, but Sir Bradley Wiggins insists he can’t help but focus closer to home as he helped launch to the 2016 Prudential RideLondon.

Fresh from winning Madison World Championship gold alongside old pal Mark Cavendish, Wiggins is hellbent on starring on the track at Rio 2016.

It has been the road where he has felt most at home in previous years, winning Time Trial gold at London 2012 – one of seven Olympic medals – while also winning the Tour de France that same year.

So it is no surprise then that he was keen to get behind the 2016 Prudential RideLondon, a cycling spectacle in his home city over the weekend of July 30-31.

And while he will be unable to take part in the Prudential RideLondon-Surrey Classic for a third straight year due to his Olympic commitments, Wiggins insists the opportunity for members of the public to experience some of the greatest scenery in cycling is something they should jump at.

“Cycling has been everything to me, it has given me everything really in the last 25 years,” said Wiggins, speaking at Lee Valley VeloPark to announce the new Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 46 event, a 46-mile sportive aimed at younger and newer riders.

“Growing up in inner-city London on an estate and coming out of there and taking up the sport of cycling, which is nothing like it is today in terms of popularity, and to be sat here 25 years on in the position I am now I am so grateful to cycling and what is has given me.

“We’ve got the Prudential RideLondon event in the summer, which 25,000 people took part in last year and now the 46-mile loop for younger and newer riders.

“It is very similar to that arrival in to Paris in the Tour de France, you see central London in the distance when you are miles away and you can see all the monuments and there is no other race, other than the Champs Elysees stage in the Tour de France, that is like that. It is one of the best races on the calendar from a rider’s point of view but one of the toughest also. “The event raises a lot of money for charity, it is the biggest cycling festival in the world and just three years old so to think where it could be in ten years from now is quite scary and just to play a small part of that is brilliant.”

Wiggins spent time speaking with riders from three charities - Greenhouse Sports, Teach First and the Invictus Games Foundation - that Prudential is supporting through this year’s event, and who are taking part in either the 46 or 100-mile sportive on traffic-free roads around London.

And Wiggins believes taking part in the spectacle on Sunday July 31 will hopefully go a long way to helping inspire the participants to fulfil their potential. “It doesn’t take much to be inspired, I watched the Olympic Games in 1992 and I was inspired by watching the cycling there and that was thousands of miles away,” he added.

“It is the first time a lot of them will have been on a proper bike and to think in four or five months time they will be doing close to 50 miles around the closed streets of London, it is a huge opportunity for them.

“A lot of them don’t quite realise the potential they have got and I think that is the key to it. This is just the start for them, if they achieve this they can achievement anything.”

The Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 46 takes place on Sunday, July 31. For more information or to enter visit prudentialridelondon.co.uk