Sir Bradley Wiggins has revealed he was groomed by a coach when he was 13 years old.
The 2012 Tour de France winner and three-time Olympic champion said he did not feel he could speak up at the time because of a difficult relationship with his stepfather.
“I was groomed by a coach when I was younger – I was about 13 – and I never fully accepted that,” he told Men’s Health UK magazine.
Asked if he was groomed sexually, Wiggins said: “Yes. It all impacted me as an adult … I buried it.
“I was such a loner … I just wanted to get out of the environment. I became so insular. I was quite a strange teenager in many ways and I think the drive on the bike stemmed from adversity.”
Wiggins, 41, made the revelation in an interview with Men’s Health ‘Talking Heads’ columnist Alastair Campbell in the May issue of the magazine.
The cyclist has previously spoken about having depression and a difficult childhood.
He said he had spent much of his life trying to understand his relationship with his father, Australian cyclist Gary Wiggins, who walked out on the family when Bradley was young and died in 2008 after a fight at a house party.
“It was definitely to do with my dad,” Wiggins said when asked what he had tried to run from.
“Never getting answers when he was murdered in 2008. He left us when I was little, so I met him for the first time when I was 18.
"We rekindled some kind of relationship but then we didn’t speak for the last couple of years before he was murdered …
“He was my hero. I wanted to prove myself to him. He was a good cyclist – he could have been really good – but he was a wasted talent.
"He was an alcoholic, a manic depressive, quite violent and he took at lot of amphetamines and [sports] drugs back then.”
Wiggins reached the pinnacle of his sport in 2012, when he became the first Briton to win the Tour, before winning Olympic gold in the time trial in London just days later.
Although he had further success, winning the world time trial in 2014 and a third Olympic team pursuit gold in 2016, Wiggins said 2012 was the year he stopped enjoying professional cycling.
“After winning the Tour de France, then winning at the Olympics, life was never the same again,” he said. “I was thrust into this fame and adulation that came with the success … I’m an introverted, private person.
“I didn’t know who ‘me’ was, so I adopted a kind of veil – a sort of rock star veil. It wasn’t really me … it was probably the unhappiest period of my life.
“Everything I did was about winning for other people, and the pressures that came with being the first British winner of the Tour. I really struggled with it.”
But Wiggins said he has now found a way to manage his mental health.
“I have to have routine,” he said. “Training every day, it’s important. Not drinking too much … with my depression, if I’m not looking after myself it manifests more like a mania.
“I always thought of depression as taking you to a dark room in a stoop. I try to be funnier and end up being shocking and contentious.”
