SIR Bradley Wiggins’ reputation will count for nothing when it comes to selection for Britain’s Olympic cycling team for Rio 2016, according to British Cycling’s chief executive.

Ian Drake says East Lancashire’s Wiggins faces intense competition if he is to succeed in his bid to become Britain’s most prolific Olympian.

Wiggins, 33, is targeting the Rio 2016 Games – which would be his fifth Olympics – and a fifth gold medal which would make it eight in all, one more than Sir Chris Hoy’s total.

Drake said 2012 Tour de France winner Wiggins will have to earn his place in the team pursuit on merit rather than because of his past achievements.

Drake, speaking at the launch of British Cycling’s four-year strategy, pointed out that Jason Kenny was picked over Hoy to compete in the sprint in London 2012, despite the Scot being defending champion and having an awesome reputation.

He said: “The fact you have Bradley saying he wants to come back and do that is great news for the sport but competition is really high which is a great place for us to be. The strength in depth of athletes that we have got now is phenomenal.

“Everyone who pulls on the Great Britain jersey now knows they are in a fight for those places.

“People have to earn that jersey. You only have to look at what happened in terms of selections for London 2012 with Jason Kenny and Chris Hoy.

“It was on ‘who is best placed to win these medals’. Those decisions are made purely on performance basis and podium performances, not what has been done historically.”

Should Wiggins come back he is likely to target a spot in the team pursuit squad for the Rio games and could ride alongside East Lancashire’s Steven Burke in that squad.

Burke, from Colne, won gold in that event at last year’s London Olympics and is expected to form the mainstay of that squad for the next three years.

He was part of the squad which took gold at this month’s Track World Cup event in Manchester.

Drake added that the governing body had not set a medal target for the cycling team in Rio, apart from that it would aim to support Team GB’s aim to at least equal its overall medal tally achieved at London 2012.

Other targets for the four years include increasing once-a-week participation by 125,000, and making significant progress in getting one million more women cycling by 2020. Changes have also been announced which should see the first women elected to British Cycling’s board.