This year is THE year for British cycling.

Great Britain’s track team dominated last month’s world championships in Mallorca, British riders – male and female - have enjoyed a remarkable spring on the road in Europe, the Tour of Britain has just announced its most ambitious schedule and the mountain bike world championships are visiting these shores for the first time in September with very real hopes of British success in a number of disciplines.

On top of that bike sales are booming, the number of lanes and trails continues to grow and more and more people are cycling to work.

And have I mentioned that the world’s largest annual spectator event, the Tour de France, is coming to this country for only the third time? Well, it is. In fact, it’s starting here for the first time and two Brits are among the favourites to win the opening prologue in Hyde Park.

And yet after 20 minutes of interesting and thoughtful conversation on Thursday with British cycling star Bradley Wiggins, one of those two favourites, I had to ask him the elephant-in-cycling’s-support-van question: what is going on with Basso/Landis/Ullrich/this month’s doping scandal?

I didn’t want to ask him (although I kind of had to) because I know he is clean and I assumed he would be tired of talking about the open wound that is cycling’s ongoing battle with drugs. I also know that most cycling fans have had enough of the dirty linen in public stuff too.

But Wiggins, the reigning Olympic and world individual pursuit champion news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/oth... didn’t mind and just smiled when I said he would be asked a similar question by similar journalists a thousand times in the run-up to the Tour’s long weekend in London.

And the reason, I believe, that Wiggins didn’t mind is that he is clean AND he is tired of talking about drugs. But he knows that the subject keeps coming back like the proverbial bad smell, and he also knows that ignoring the issue isn’t going to make it go away.

That is why when I asked Wiggins if Ivan Basso’s recent suspension news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/oth... was bad news for cycling, he said, “No, it is good news”.

As a rider and a fan, the Belgian-born but Maida Vale-raised Wiggins was adamant that anybody implicated in the infamous “Operacion Puerto” affair would not be welcome on the start line in London on 7 July.

He also agreed with my suggestion that the last nine months or so have been seriously damaging to cycling’s reputation.

The pre-Tour blow of losing Basso, Jan Ullrich and a host of other leading riders in the wake of the OP raids in Spain news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/oth... was then compounded by the unprecedented – and far from resolved – fiasco of losing the race’s eventual “winner”, Floyd Landis, to another drugs scandal.

“It’s a mess,” said Wiggins. “And every time something new comes out, they get the best lawyers, it gets dragged through the courts news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/oth... and nobody seems to get punished.

“I don’t think we will ever know what really happened.”

When I heard him say that I thought how sad that somebody who loves cycling as much as Wiggins clearly does has been reduced to resigned cynicism. Particularly after I had heard him talk about the camaraderie that a challenge like the Tour inspires amongst the riders. But then I guess that’s the point – cheats shatter that camaraderie.

“I remember when Landis launched that attack on the 17th stage news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/oth... because it absolutely killed me. I was in the “grupetto” (the pack of non-climbers that bring up the rear) holding on to stay inside the time limit (all riders must finish within a certain amount of time after the winner crosses the line to remain in the race),” he recalled.

“Landis had lost 10 minutes the day before but he took nearly six mountains out of the other leaders on that last climb. I finished 52 minutes behind him. It was not a human effort.

“And what is often forgotten is that some riders didn’t make the time cut that day, only three days before the finish in Paris. That is messing with people’s livelihoods because next year’s contract could depend on that.”

It is small wonder then that Wiggins is confident he speaks for the majority of cyclists – who are almost certainly clean – when he says he has little sympathy for the likes of Basso, Landis and Ullrich.

“I used to think it would be easy to spot the cheats. I thought they would be bad people,” he continued.

“But I have now learned that you just can’t tell who is doing what. You can be sure about what is happening in your own team but you just don’t know about anybody else.

“Some of the nicest people I’ve met in cycling have turned out to be cheats. But I guess that’s just life, you will always get people that want something so much they will try anything to achieve it.”

That comment, ironically, brings me to Wiggins’ team Cofidis and the other British star who is a very real candidate for the yellow jersey come the first stage proper on 8 July. Because it was David Millar’s failed drugs test in 2004 that saw the team’s Tour hopes shattered for that season and the young Scot serve a two-year ban.

A repentant Millar, having served his time, is back news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/oth... And Cofidis have learned their lessons too.

“We’ve come out the other side,” said Wiggins. “The team is more focused on image now than results. The idea is to get a bunch of young guys competing clean.”

As a result, Wiggins, already rigorously tested as an Olympic athlete, is subject to frequent tests by his own team.

The fact that CSC, Basso’s old team, and T-Mobile, Ullrich’s old team, are also implementing similar policies says everything you need to know about the sport’s determination to rid itself of the bad rap it has acquired.

“All I know is that I want to get back to talking about clean riders doing great things in the world’s best race,” was how Wiggins put it, and I couldn’t agree with him more. The thought that cycling as a global sport could use some of British cycling’s good vibes right now is a delicious irony.

For so long an also-ran on the global stage – thanks largely to the apathy of the media and public and the neglect of the sporting establishment – British cycling has never been healthier.

And for that reason I can’t think of a better place to start the Tour’s rehabilitation. Roll on July and beginning of a new, brighter, chapter in cycling history.