Bradley Wiggins: I was groomed by a cycling coach at age 13
Olympic champion reveals he ‘buried’ ordeal but it haunted him as an adult
SIR Bradley Wiggins has revealed he was sexually groomed by a cycling coach when he was 13.
The Tour de France winner and Olympic champion said he ‘buried’ the ordeal because he felt unable to tell his stepfather at the time.
Wiggins, 41, has often spoken about his troubled childhood. His father Gary, a professional cyclist, walked out on the family when he was a toddler and was a drug-taking alcoholic who ended up being beaten to death in Australia.
But he made no mention of being the victim of grooming in his two autobiographies and has not named the coach who groomed him.
The admission was made in an interview about mental health with Men’s Health UK. Speaking to former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell for the magazine, Wiggins said: ‘I was groomed by a coach when I was younger – I was about 13 – and I never fully accepted that.
‘It all impacted me as an adult...I buried it. My stepfather was quite violent to me, he used to call me a f **** t for wearing Lycra and stuff, so I didn’t think I could tell him. I was such a loner... I just wanted to get out of the environment. I became so insular.
‘I was quite a strange teenager in many ways and I think the drive on the bike stemmed from adversity.’
Asked about things he has tried to run away from in life, Wiggins said: ‘It was definitely to do with my dad. Never getting answers when he was murdered in 2008. He left us when I was little, so I met him for the first time when I was 18. We rekindled some kind of relationship but then we didn’t speak for the last couple of years before he was murdered. He was my hero. I wanted to prove myself to him.
‘He was a good cyclist – he could have been really good – but he was a wasted talent. He was an alcoholic, a manic depressive, quite violent and he took a lot of amphetamines and [performanceenhancing] drugs back then.’
Ironically, Wiggins said it was when he produced his greatest triumphs that he stopped enjoying life as a professional cyclist.
Speaking to Campbell – who is the magazine’s ‘Talking Heads’ columnist – he said ‘life was never the same again’ after winning the Tour de France and an Olympic gold medal during the same glorious summer of 2012. ‘I was thrust into this fame and adulation that came with the success... I’m an introverted, private person. I didn’t know who “me” was, so I adopted a kind of veil – a sort of rock-star veil. It wasn’t really me. It was probably the unhappiest period of my life.
‘Everything I did was about winning for other people, and the pressures that came with being the first British winner of the Tour – I really struggled with it.’ Wiggins retired from cycling in 2016 but works in the sport as a pundit and is riding from Scotland to the Isle of Wight next week for a new mental health podcast series.
He told Men’s Health he managed his mental health problems by having a routine, training daily and ‘not drinking too much’.
He said: ‘With my depression, if I’m not looking after myself, it manifests more like a mania. I always thought of depression as taking you to a dark room in a stoop. I try to be funnier and end up being shocking and contentious.’ Wiggins announced in May 2020 that he had split from his wife
Cath after 16 years of marriage. The couple have two children.
Months later he was reported to have started a relationship with PR executive Laura Hartshorne.
In his 2008 autobiography, In Pursuit of Glory, Wiggins wrote about how his mother Linda’s new partner Brendan became his ‘quasistepfather’ when he was a teenager and was ‘totally supportive.’ Until the couple split in his late teens, ‘we rubbed along fine,’ he wrote.
But four years ago, in a postretirement theatre tour, he spoke candidly about how his stepfather would beat him.
The May issue of Men’s Health is on sale from April 20
‘The unhappiest period of my life’