The 35-year-old, who also boasts four Olympic and seven world titles to his name during a stellar career, will be in search of another milestone at Rio 2016 as a medal in the team pursuit would see him overtake fellow knight of the realm and cycling legend Chris Hoy as Britain’s most decorated Olympian. However, in the build up to the Games, Wiggins has opted to give some history away, albeit temporarily.

His personal bike collection will be missing Francesco Moser’s 1984 hour record bike until the end of June 2016, after he loaned the signed item to the Design Museum in London as part of their “Cycle Revolution” exhibition which has opened this month.

It is one of 77 bikes on display in what amounts to a treasure trove of cycling memorabilia, which includes models ridden by the world’s elite cyclists, the latest prototypes and innovations set to be hitting the track or streets, as well as jerseys and accessories.

“We decided to call the exhibition Cycle Revolution because cycling is so incredibly popular in Britain, on a scale we have not seen since the Second World War,” said Donna Loveday, curator of the exhibition.

“It is popular in many different areas which is what the exhibition tries to reflect. As I was talking to cyclists it became clear that they are very passionate about the bikes they ride, with the bikes appearing to be an extension of themselves. So we decided to group our cyclists into tribes.”

The “Thrill Seekers” tribe focuses on those who opt for mountain biking or BMX riding, while the “Urban Riders” section covers the various types of riders throughout the world’s cities. Meanwhile, “Cargo Bikers” uncovers the world of those who work on their two-wheeled machines. Both Wiggins and Moser though unsurprisingly feature in the “High Performers” tribe which is seen at the start of the exhibition.

While the performers section predominantly focuses on recent history and British riders, the Ernesto Colnago built bike ridden by Eddy Merckx in his hour record bid in 1972, in which he set a new mark of 49.431 kilometres in Mexico City, is arguably the most precious item on display at the exhibition.

Placed alongside the hour record bikes used by Moser and Wiggins, it offers the public a greater understanding of how changing designs played a crucial part in the record being extended and indeed the decision taken by the International Cycling Union (UCI) in 1997 to have two separate hour records. The first being the UCI Hour Record, restricting the riders to similar equipment used by Merckx, while the Best Human Effort saw modern equipment available for attempts.

After a seven year gap between Merckx' attempt and when Moser took to the start-line in the same city for his effort, the drop handlebars and wire spoke wheels used by the Belgian great had been replaced by bull-horn handlebars and disc wheels, which were designed to reduce aerodynamic drag. Meanwhile, Wiggins’ bike, which he used in setting a unified record of 54.526km earlier this year, after a UCI rule change in 2014, has seen the tubular frame used by Merckx replaced with a much sleeker design while the heavier steel is replaced with carbon fibre.

The exhibition though provides several interviews throughout the various tribes for visitors to listen to throughout, with Chris Boardman featuring heavily. The Briton, a previous holder of the hour record, explains the process behind developing his bike ahead of the Barcelona 1992 Summer Olympics. It was at these Games where he ended a 72-year British wait for a cycling gold and his success in the 4km individual pursuit is often viewed as being the springboard to Britain’s recent domination on the track and triumphs on the road. He inspired a watching Wiggins at home and his Lotus Type 108 is the opening bike in the exhibition.

Boardman was approached by bike designer Mike Burrows and aerodynamicist Richard Hill, whose career had been forged in Formula One with the Lotus team, where it was explained to him that his time over the distance could be reduced by around seven seconds by using the Hill-designed machine and adopting a new position on the bike. Having instantly agreed to the idea, Boardman found his body being manipulated on the Lotus Type 108 in a wind tunnel before eventually the superman position was born, deemed the optimum aerodynamic stance. He would go on to break the world record on two occasions in the heats, before catching Germany’s Jens Lehmann in the final.

It was hard, having listened to the video and looked at the bikes on show in the high performance section, not to wonder whether we could see the UCI intervene in the future to introduce a standard machine for events such as the Olympics and World Championships, akin to what they had done with the hour record in the past.

With nations like Britain able to use vast funds to create lighter and more aerodynamic bikes than smaller countries who have less funding, could we have a future debate in the future about “technological doping”,  as there was in swimming when the LZR Racer bodysuit aided so many world records before being banned. Perhaps there were already murmurings of discontent when the French cycling team suggested Britain had “rounder wheels” which aided their success at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Rounder wheels or not, one thing for certain is that British Cycling has enjoyed vast success over the past ten or so years, illustrated by the World Championship jerseys of Nicole Cooke and Mark Cavendish, as well as Chris Froome’s 2015 Tour de France yellow jersey, which were loaned to the museum by British fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, a well-known cycling fan. However, it is Britain’s most decorated Olympian Sir Chris Hoy who was chosen to be the advocate for the high performance tribe with the bike used for his fifth and sixth Olympic golds positioned in the middle of the section.

Hoy’s former team-mate and three-time BMX champion Shanaze Reade was selected as the advocate for the thrill seekers tribe with Loveday acknowledging there was a desire to reflect the development of women’s cycling in Britain, displayed by several bikes used by Joanna Rowsell Shand.

While the section does not boast as many highlights as the high performance one, installations showing the development of the Peckham BMX club, which went from having a facility with “fridges” on it to establishing a proper track, proved to be interesting, while a video by trials and stunt expert Danny Macaskill is a breathtaking piece of viewing.

The tricks at high speed descent performed by the thrill seekers are not without risk, which is best conveyed by another video installation which details the story of mountain bike champion Martyn Ashton, who was paralysed from the waist down after breaking his back in an accident. Ashton though returned to mountain biking on a modified machine, which is displayed in the exhibition.

A section is also dedicated to manufacturers in which six award-winning independent bicycle makers display their workshops in videos, while one of the creations is on show in the exhibition itself. It precedes the tribe of the Urban Riders, whose advocate Lucy Granville won a global competition to have her bike included in the exhibition. A real mix of two wheeled creations are on show in the tribe including the Santander Cycles public hire scheme bike, which has been affectionately known as a “Boris Bike” after London’s Mayor Boris Johnson.

“We are looking at how designers are trying to build the perfect bike for the city user,” explains Loveday. “Our two focuses are Moulten and Brompton, we wanted to look at the evolution of the small wheeled and folding bike. We have five examples of the Moulten to show the evolution to the current production model. While the Brompton folding bike is a great success story with over 80,000 in London alone.”

In addition to creating the perfect bike for the city cyclist, the development of accessories and clothing aimed at boosting the safety of those travelling on some of the busiest roads in the world is also considered during the section. The highlight being a full tweed suit, which is designed to be reflective when on the roads yet allow their wearer to arrive at their destination without needing to change into smarter attire.

The closing tribe, the Cargo Bikers, feels somewhat a niche addition to the exhibition although its inclusion does allow the public to learn about the test ride its advocate Lawrence Brand embarked on after creating “the Bringley”. Having complete the prototype, designed to be able to transport his weekly food shop, Brand opted for a 5,000km road test which took him through Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. On completing the lengthy test, he then established his own cargo bike company.

Following the completion of the tribes the exhibition begins to investigate the future of cycling for the general public, with many of those who have loaned equipment to the museum having their say on how to get more people cycling and on how to make city cycling safer. Boardman, an extremely active campaigner for investment into cycling infrastructure, claims in his interview that Britain needs to make a conscious decision similar to the Dutch in the past to become a “cycling nation” and says he would have “no hesitation” in giving up his Olympic gold medal for 20 per cent of all journeys being taken by bike in the country.

Boardman is quickly followed by London Mayor Johnson, who claims the capital is becoming one of the biggest “cycling cities” in the world. One of his solutions for making cycling safer and encouraging more of the public to take to the roads is a cycle superhighway, with the first traffic free route having been opened in the city this past week, which Johnson claimed was a bit like bringing “a bit of Amsterdam” to London.

The Dutch city, in which 70 per cent of journeys are taken by bike, is one of 10 featured in a fascinating display which uncovers the growing trends and measures introduced to help cycling flourish in urban areas. As well as London, Amsterdam is joined by Bogota, Seville, Paris, Freiberg, Tokyo, New York, Montreal and Copenhagen, the latter recently named as the UCI’s latest Bike City, on a map which uncovers the key facts behind the development infrastructure in each of the cities.

For instance the display reveals how the Colombian capital of Bogota has made Sunday a car-free day in most areas, leaving 120km of roads closed for the exclusive use of cyclists and pedestrians. As a consequence, around two million bike users are believed to take to the roads each week.

Several radical ideas are suggested to be introduced into London, which despite having seen a large boost in the number of commuters travelling by bike, still lags well behind the other cities on the display. One suggestion proposed by architect Norman Foster would see a network of elevated pathways to be erected above train lines to give cyclists around 220km of dedicated cycle lanes. Another proposal would see unused tube lines reused as cycle paths.

While visitors to the exhibition will be left pondering the future of cycling infrastructure, they will also be surrounded by potential bikes of the future, with several prototypes featuring in the closing section. Novel contraptions designed by materials such as plywood and bamboo are included, but the focus is immediately drawn towards the “SplinterBike”. Designed following a bet, the entirely wooden bike contains no bolts or screws but is instead glued together. Not only is the bike rideable, but it also boasts the land speed record for wooden bicycles.

Despite the bikes all having the same concept, the wide variety of futuristic ideas on show does leave you wondering whether further developments in the future will continue to help shave further seconds off times at the top level of the sport. The evolution of the bicycle shows no sign of coming to a conclusion if the final section of the Cycle Revolution is anything to go by. Boardman may have been been told ahead of the Barcelona 1992 Olympics that seven seconds could be taken off his time with a new bike and position, but 23-years on tweaks are still being made.

I wonder if in another 23-years, Wiggins’ hour bike will have been bettered by another technological advancement and the record he aimed to put on “the shelf” will have passed on to another. Perhaps further improvements will see him part with more history, but this time permanently.