The British champion’s revelations in his autobiography The Chain: “A year ago I was homeless, now I earn more than before. Now I don’t drink anymore but…”
The addiction to cocaine and alcohol, the recovery, the new life begun with the help of Lance Armstrong. After the previews last May, Bradley Wiggins spoke to Time on the eve of the publication of “The Chain”, the autobiography of the British champion who in his career won the Tour de France in 2012 and 5 Olympic golds, between track and time trial. “At London 2012 I was snorting cocaine off my gold medal, I hated my result. It was like urinating on someone’s grave, and at that moment I was urinating on my own. The gold medal, the Tour de France. All of that was dead to me,” he revealed to the Times. Wiggins says he has overcome the dark period of his life, he is no longer dependent on alcohol although he has some doubts about his ability to resist temptation: “If I drank three pints every now and then and someone drew a line in front of me, I would probably… Well, I don’t know. But I don’t drink anymore. I go to the gym every day. I have a daily routine that starts at 6.15. I live as if I were a professional athlete, I plan my meals.”
rebirth
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After going broke and becoming homeless, he was reborn: “I now earn more than I have earned in the last six years. I have my own house. I am no longer homeless. A year ago I was homeless.” And he has made peace with the bicycle: “At the weekend I still cycle, with the same feeling of freedom I felt as a child.” In the long interview Wiggins threw out the doping accusations made against him on Team Sky. After his retirement in 2018, the British government’s standing committee accused him of having cheated, along with his team, to win the Tour. According to the report, Team Sky exploited the therapeutic exemption system with a convenient diagnosis of asthma only to have Wiggins take corticosteroids which would have improved his power-to-weight ratio in preparation for the competition. Wiggins has always denied having taken any drugs except “for medical purposes”. “There was something more serious going on. The team threw me under the bus, to cover for someone else. But it will come out. I’d like to know, one way or another, what really happened,” he said.