“I took tons of cocaine”
Ex-tour winner unpacks about drug addiction
13.05.2025 – 2:00 p.m.Reading time: 2 min.
From the Olympic champion to dependent: Bradley Wiggins describes his deep fall after the end of the career. The Briton recognized the extent of its drug addiction late.
After his Tour-de-France victory in 2012, Bradley Wiggin was considered the hero of British sport. In the same summer, the former cycling professional in London won Olympic gold in the individual time trial, and he won another four gold medals while driving between 2004 and 2016. In the UK, he was celebrated for his success. But after the resignation from competitive sports in 2016, an abrupt crash followed.
As Wiggins now describes in an interview with the British newspaper “The Observer”, after the end of his career, he fell out of drug use. “I took tons of cocaine. I had a really bad problem. My children wanted to send me to a withdrawal clinic. I was like on a wire rope,” said the 45-year-old.
For a long time, nobody in his environment knew about his dependency. “I was a functioning addict. People didn’t notice it. I was almost always high for years,” said Wiggins. His family also suffered from his situation. “There were times when my son thought, I would be found dead tomorrow morning,” said the five -time Olympic champion of his bad times after his career. There was no middle ground for him. A year ago he got rid of his addiction.
The turnaround only came a year ago. Since then he has been clean. An old companion from cycling played an important role: Lance Armstrong. The American, who had stood his doping in 2013 and was closed, tried to reach him. “With Jan (Ullrich, editor’s note), he had a similar thing. They tried to reach me, but could not find me. My son speaks a lot to Lance,” said Wiggins. According to Wiggins, Armstrong had “worried about me for a long time”.
The Brit processes its experiences in an autobiography entitled “The Chain”, which is scheduled to appear this year. In it he also addresses his childhood, his sporting career and his later crash. “It became clear to me that I had a huge problem. I had to stop. I’m glad I was still here. I was the victim of my own decisions for years,” Wiggins continued.