In an interview with the Observer, Wiggins said of his post-career cocaine addiction: “There were times my son thought I was going to be found dead in the morning.
“I was a functioning addict. People wouldn’t realise – I was high most of the time for many years.”
Wiggins – a gangly north Londoner, from a broken home, brought up in poverty – made it to the very top of a sport that requires clinical preparation and a calm head under pressure.
In interviews during his career, Wiggins exuded calm and charm. He seemed to have everything under control.
And perhaps it was, with the hyper-organised, big-budget Team Sky around him between 2010 and 2015, run by Dave Brailsford and Rod Ellingworth – with whom he would win the 2012 Tour, the 2014 world time trial championship and much more.
Wiggins’ talent and presence inspired the team to a period of domination in road cycling never before seen.
But post-career, his troubles spiralled.
In 2020, his marriage to Cath came to an end. They have two children: Ben – now a rider himself with Hamens Berman Jayco – and Isabella.
Then came the collapse of Team Wiggins, which he had founded in 2015. The team lacked enough blue chip sponsors, despite having so many talented British riders. And there was an awful lot more of Wiggins’ own money invested in the team than most realised.
That, and a cocaine addiction, would spell trouble for anybody’s wallet – even a sporting icon. And Wiggins was declared bankrupt.
“I already had a lot of self-hatred,” said Wiggins of his post-career addiction. “But I was amplifying it. 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.
“There’s no middle ground for me. I can’t just have a glass of wine – if I have a glass of wine, then I’m buying drugs. My proclivity to addiction was easing the pain that I lived with.”
Wiggins’ former team boss Jonathan Vaughters – who now heads the EF Education-EasyPost World Tour team – understands why Wiggins has come across the problems he has. But that it’s not through a lack of self-awareness.
“I mean, ultimately pro cyclists are always going to search for that dopamine hit they got while racing,” Vaughters said. “[It] makes them an easy target for addiction.
“I mean… I’d say Wiggo is far more gifted, from an IQ standpoint, than most people. He’s very sensitive to social interactions too. So, you have a guy that’s hyper intelligent, hyper aware of social interactions, and has led an extremely disciplined, but dopamine-soaked lifestyle as a professional racer… It’s a perfect storm.
“He’s very clever. No formal education at all. But he reads people like a book.”
