The tragic secrets of Bradley Wiggins, sexually assaulted at 13


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Bradley Wiggins, former winner of the Tour du France in 2012, gave himself up as rarely in the latest edition of “Men’s Health UK”, revealing that he was sexually abused at the age of 13 by a former coach.

In 2012, Bradley Wiggins became Britain’s first Tour de France winner. He then won the Olympics. But while these results should have marked the peak of his career, the cyclist never felt so lost, hiding behind “a rock star image” that was “not really” him. Calling himself “introverted and private”, he says he never liked the attention on him. “It was probably the most unhappy period of my life. All I did was win for others, and the pressures came with being the first British Tour winner. I really struggled with that.” Now that his career is over, he has decided to confide and reveal himself as he is.

In the latest edition of ‘Men’s Health UK’, he recounts that difficult time in his life when he was struck by depression. A malaise that goes back many years before his titles. In the magazine he is on the front page of, he talks about his complicated relationship with his father, who was killed in 2008. “He left us when I was little, so I met him for the first time when I was 18. . We rekindled some sort of relationship, but we didn’t speak to each other for the last two years before he was murdered. He lived in poverty. I never went to the funeral,” he says. “He was my hero. I wanted to prove myself to him. He was a good cyclist – he could have been very good – but it was a wasted talent. He was an alcoholic, a manic-depressive, quite violent and he took a lot of amphetamines and doping products at the time.

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victim of sexual abuse

It is therefore without the presence of his father that he had to face, when he was only 13 years old, an event that will change him forever. “I was sexually abused by a trainer when I was younger, and I never really accepted that situation,” he explains. “I buried that. My stepdad was violent with me, he used to call me a fag because I wore lycra and stuff like that. So I never thought I could talk to him about it. I was so alone,” he recalls. “I haven’t spoken to anyone about this. I just wanted to get out of this environment. (…) I was quite a strange teenager in many ways.” It was to escape his life, the environment in which he lived, that he focused on cycling. “I’ve never been happier than on my bike,” he says, acknowledging, however, that he has a love and hate relationship with his sport.





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