"The people who ruined me are paying a heavy price"; Wiggins back on track – thanks to Armstrong

Former Tour winner Bradley Wiggins has provided an update on his situation after his career. The Brit was declared bankrupt, became homeless, and got into trouble, but is slowly climbing out of the depths again, thanks partly to Lance Armstrong, The Telegraph quotes.

After ending his active cycling career, Wiggins quickly got into trouble. "I started living my life as a normal person at 36. I was always wary of people blowing smoke up my a---, because I didn’t think much of myself. Once cycling was gone, this veil of being Bradley Wiggins went, too. I had to deal with myself. And I didn’t like myself very much.”

"When I became successful in cycling, I played a character more, in order to hide in public, it was really just to hide from actually being me. I didn’t know who I was, and so this 'Sir Wiggo' character manifested itself more and more," he says. "I would always do something silly when the tension was on me off the bike. Take the time I stuck my tongue out on the Olympic podium in Rio."

"Within three years of retiring, I was a drug addict," Wiggins continues. "And a lot of it was to do with this recall of my childhood. I had grown up with an absent father and the contradiction is that the coach who abused me was my first male role model in cycling. You’re only 13, but it leads to a really dark period."

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Wiggins: "I was getting ripped off left, right and centre by the people looking after me"

Wiggins was also declared bankrupt. "I regret I never paid attention to my financial affairs when I was racing. It’s one of the things that happens to athletes – you make a lot of money and, if you haven’t got your eyes on it, people take advantage. I was getting ripped off left, right and centre by the people looking after me. Accountants as well."

Wiggins says that work is now underway to resolve the situation. "It’s all resolved now. I’m on the front foot now. This was something that was done to me. Eight months on, it has all turned around. The people who are responsible are paying a heavy price for it. Fortunately, it’s all good. My life’s in a good place."

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Wiggins thanks Armstrong: "Lance Armstrong has been very good for me"

The former cyclist recovered thanks in part to Armstrong, who paid for Wiggins' therapy. "It’s great. I’ve really got to know him over the past eight years, and he has been there for me in recent times. He packed me off to this extensive therapy centre, paid for it all. He had a very similar upbringing to me – a fatherless upbringing. You can’t will this stuff away, he told me. You have to sort it out. On the human side."

“You always have to put this disclaimer in with Lance: Yeah, he took drugs and all that. That’s a different part of it, very polarising. It’s an open wound in cycling. But in terms of me being here, being alive, he has really helped. He has done the same for Jan Ullrich. The three of us grew up without a father."

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