If you hadn’t heard of the name until a month ago, you’re going to be hearing a lot more of it from now on. Self styled mod super biker and Olympic gold medal winning time trialler Bradley Wiggins is going to be on every chat/talent/variety show and cereal packet known to man quicker than Bradley completed his Olympic time trial.
And very soon, the bemused 32 year old Londoner, who still doesn’t quite understand what all the fuss is about, is going to have major watch manufacturers banging on his door begging him to be a brand ambassador.
Bradley Wiggins
When Britain’s most be-medalled Olympian is not powering his way across kilometres of hard road on a high tech bicycle, the off duty Bradley Wiggins is something of a trendsetter. The sideburns are already a trademark. But recently his Mod style has come to the fore and has been widely featured.
So the question is, which watch brand will sign Bradley Wiggins as its brand ambassador, and incidentally, his signature on any contract is as loopy and twisting as the roads he takes on time trials.
It’s unlikely that Lambretta or Vespa, two leading brands of mod scooters, are going to get serious about producing anything other than low cost accessory watches any time soon. Even up-market mod brand Fred Perry have a disappointing range of watches.
Will one of the major Swiss watch brands snap him up? It’s possible. Tag Heuer, even Omega would no doubt love to have him wearing one of their watches at every press call. Rolex may decide Bradley is just a little too working class hero to fit their mould.
Besides, being a patriotic type, it’s more likely Bradley would plump for a British brand. Anglo Swiss brand GRAHAM Watches signs up any number of race car drivers with incredible regularity. Scarcely a week goes by when they haven’t added another one to their roster, but the match and the oversized watches are not quite right.
Bremont and Bradley
Bremont on the other hand, could offer the quality and British quirkiness that may appeal to Mr. Wiggins. All Bremont watches are constructed with super-hardened steel (typically nine times harder than standard steel cases). Heat-treated, coated with carbon and bombarded with electrons – the resulting steel is highly scratch resistant, equivalent to 2000Hv on the Vickers hardness scale. The sapphire crystal also exhibits a similar hardness value – highly scratch resistant, the convex crystal is layered with a series of anti-reflective coatings reducing reflection to less than 0.5%
Like Bradley, every Bremont is soundly road tested before it takes its place in the showroom. The watches are chronometer tested with no less than 15 days of temperature and usage tests submitted to the ‘Controle Officiel Suisse des Chronometeres’. The average daily variation rate must be between -4 and +6 seconds. With 86,400 seconds in a single day, this gives Bremont’s watches an accuracy in the region of 99.998%.
The resulting COSC certificate accompanies each watch. That’s the kind of intricate time trialling that may appeal to Wiggins. Then it would just be a matter of Nick and Giles English sitting down with Bradley to design a watch which truly expresses his personality.
I see Union Jack roundels.
