Warning: this article contains references to suicide, emotional and sexual abuse.
Sir Bradley Wiggins has further opened up regarding his childhood and subsequent battles with mental health issues during the highs of his professional career and retirement, stating “I was putting myself in some situations where someone would have found me dead in the morning”.
The highly decorated former Tour de France winner and four-time Olympic gold medallist – who was declared bankrupt in June – has very publicly spoken out about the issues he has faced, particularly in recent years.
In 2022, Wiggins told Mens Health that he was groomed as a 13-year-old by a former coach. Last year, he said he suffered ‘borderline rape and sexual abuse’ during a three-year period.
The alleged abuser was later named as Stan Knight of the Archer Road club in West London by The Times.
Speaking on the recently published Under the Surface podcast, Wiggins alleged Knight abused him in the shower at a hostel in Dorset.
“Had I not come out about that and had I not done that interview, maybe I wouldn’t be here today,” he said. “I wasn’t suicidal, I wouldn’t have killed myself, but I think I was putting myself in some situations where someone would have found me dead in the morning.”
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“It wouldn’t have been purposefully, I wouldn’t have done it on purpose. But I think I was walking a tightrope at times,” he added.
He also revealed that four other alleged victims of Knight had approached him since he opened up.
Wiggins has previously said that he used cycling as a means of distraction from his upbringing, his largely absent father – Gary Wiggins, an Australian former cyclist who died in 2008 – and the alleged sexual abuse.
“It was a great distraction for everything else in my life that normal people would get time to get over,” he told Cycling Weekly in an exclusive interview in June.
Wiggins told Under the Surface that growing up he was used “as a weird pawn” by his mother after his father left the family.
He said: “‘You’ll be good at it because your Dad was good at it’, that line I realise has affected me the most in my adulthood, because that’s where all my self-worth issues came from because me the human, there was nothing about me, it was because your Dad was good at this, and you’re going to be a good cyclist because of that, that was a constant narrative.
“She wanted to show him, ‘you’ve left him, so I’m going to make your boy better than you ever was [sic]’. I was just bred to be this monster on the bike and it worked. I just thought she was doing her best for me. I can’t ever have a conversation with her about this, she refuses to.”
Wiggins at the Cambridge Union in 2023
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Wiggins went on to say that his mother stopped all communication with him after his retirement in 2016.
He said: “I never felt loved, that’s an important thing in childhood…There was a lack of affection, lack of emotional guardedness within the family for one reason or another. I never got told I was loved by my mum, ever. People would say it doesn’t mean she didn’t love you, but I’m just saying how I felt. I could have done with a hug at times, I was never hugged.”
Wiggins later made contact with his father, before a planned meeting with him at Ghent Six left him “broken”.
“Jealousy crept in and he didn’t like it,” Wiggins explained. “He pulled me to one side, he was drunk, and he said ‘just remember one thing, Brad, you’re never going to be as good as your old man was’ and it broke my heart, it f**king broke me that. I still remember it to this day, he squeezed my arm and I realise now how much that impacted me.”
Revealing more about his difficult relationship with both parents, he said that his “nationality was lied about” before going on to speak in more detail about his issues with self-esteem which were amplified around the time of his Tour de France and Olympic success in 2012.
“When I won sports personality of the year, I pulled out with two weeks to go,” he explained. “I just said I don’t want to do this. But they said to me ‘you’ve got to, it’s going to look terrible for you’. So I put my best suit on, a fancy suit, had a silly barnet and got drunk before I went up. Sue Barker was going to interview me, so I messed around and tried to deflect from the severity of the interview. I just thought I don’t know what to do or say here.”
“When she says ‘what a performance, Bradley’ I realised that because of my self-worth I’d just be funny and call her Susan, try and make a joke and deflect from everything… I realise now that it all stems from no one ever telling me that I was enough just as me. Forget cycling, forget all that, you’re just enough as a person. I tell my son that every day, forget cycling, you’re just enough.”
He later graphically recounted the alleged abuse he suffered at the hands of Knight, revealing that he believes he was drugged along with another victim. Wiggins explained that Knight would take both him and another boy to a hostel in Dorset.
“It was insidious,” Wiggins said as he recalled the sickening incidents. “Up to count I had 36 incidents… He would have us two in the showers showing us how to clean our scrotum, because that’s quite an important area when you’re riding a bike, because it can get infected with saddle sores.
“So on the basis that ‘this is what you need to do as a professional bike rider, you need to look up’, but he would hold our scrotums and show us the particular scrubbing method.”
“There were lot of incidents like that,” he added. “Waking up naked and not going to bed with pyjamas, waking up naked but not remembering waking up in the night and taking them off.
“It’s very very very f****d up.”
Wiggins concluded by discussing the healing process he has undergone since first publicly discussing the alleged sexual abuse he suffered. He explained that an important part had been discovering that it was not just him who had been targeted by the coach, at the time.
“Four other people came forward,” he said. “Four other people came forward and said ‘it also happened to me with this coach’, I thought I was the only one…”I’ll never be healed from it, but the biggest part of my healing process has been that if I’d never have talked about it, I’d never have met the other victims and that’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.”
Wiggins says that ultimately the alleged abuse is the biggest issue to blame for his issues in later life.
“It’s the thing that’s held me back the most,” he concluded. “It’s where all my self-worth issues came from, I wished my dad had been around to kill this gentleman. I wished that I’d never started cycling, because if I’d never been taken down that day, to start cycling because I was ‘Wiggo’s boy’, I would never have met this guy and it would never have happened.”
The NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331
