Bradley Wiggins details battle with cocaine addiction: ‘I was walking a tightrope’

The five-time Olympic gold medalist has revealed he spiralled into the problem after retiring in 2016

Bradley Wiggins revealed that his son feared he may find him dead after the British cycling legend turned into a “functioning cocaine addict” following his retirement.

Wiggins, who won the 2012 Tour de France alongside five Olympic gold medals, retired in 2016 but fell into debt and addiction, eventually being declared bankrupt last year despite having built an estimated fortune of £13m.

And the 45-year-old, whose autobiography, The Chain, will be published later this year, opened up on his family’s fears that he could lose his life to his addiction, adding that he is “lucky to be here”.

“There were times my son thought I was going to be found dead in the morning,” Wiggins told The Observer.

“I was a functioning addict. People wouldn’t realise. I was high most of the time for many years.

“I was doing s***loads of cocaine. I had a really bad problem. My kids were going to put me in rehab. I was walking a tightrope,” he added.

Wiggins also revealed that he was helped by fellow former cyclist Lance Armstrong, who was stripped of his own Tour de France titles after a doping scandal that he confessed to. The American has also helped former rival Jan Ullrich with his own addiction and mental health problems.

Bradley Wiggins during television coverage of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (Getty)

“[Lance] worried about me for a long time,” Wiggins said.

“They’d try and get hold of me, but couldn’t find where I was. They wouldn’t hear from me for days on end.

“I can talk about these things candidly now. There was an element of me living a lie, in not talking about it,” added the Briton, explaining that “my proclivity to addiction was easing the pain that I lived with.”

Great Britain’s Bradley Wiggins celebrates after winning the 2012 Tour de France (PA) (PA Archive)

He explained that his addictive behaviour “was amplifying” his own “self-hatred”.

“It was a form of self-harm and self-sabotage. It was not the person I wanted to be. I realised I was hurting a lot of people around me,” he said.

In previous interviews, Wiggins has revealed personal struggles, including abuse at the hands of a cycling coach when he was a junior. In the years following his retirement, he was also the subject of a scandal in what became known as the “jiffy bag” incident, in which Team Sky and British Cycling were investigated after a package containing an unknown substance was delivered to Wiggins at the 2011 Criterium de Dauphine.

And Wiggins told The Observer that he has finally found some peace after the incident and subsequent investigation, having been “in the eye of the storm”.

“I felt some of those questions needed to be answered and put to bed from the people that could answer those questions, like ‘What was in the package?’”

“I would love to know one way or another what actually happened,” he added.

Wiggins also revealed that he was able to quit his addiction around a year ago, without the need for external help. His son Ben, 20, currently rides for UCI team Hagens Berman Jayco and became a junior world champion in the Madison event in 2023.