Tour de France champion and five-time Olympic champion Sir Bradley Wiggins said he became a cocaine addict in the years after his career.

The 45-year-old Briton told Observer,,,,, External About the level of addiction he developed after retiring from cycling in 2016 and explains how his family worried about him.

"Sometimes my son thought I would be found dead in the morning," Wiggins said.

"I'm a fully functional addict. People don't realize - I've been high for most of the years."

Wiggins won Olympic gold medals at the Athens, Beijing and Rio de Janeiro Games and won a road time trial in London in 2012 after becoming the first British rider to win the Tour de France.

Since retirement, Wiggins talked about his father's jealousy and was groomed as a child by the coach, and he was also declared bankrupt in June 2024.

Wiggins,,,,, External Helped him during his recovery.

He said the American, who was deprived of seven Tour de France champions for using performance-enhancing drugs, was "worrying about me for a long time," and Armstrong spoke with Wiggins' son Ben - who is also a professional cyclist - and a lot of "a lot" about his father.

"I realized I had a huge problem. I had to stop. I was lucky to be here.

"I already have a lot of self-hate, but I'm amplifying it. It's a form of self-harm and self-destruction. It's not the person I want to be. I realize I'm hurting a lot of people around me.

"I have no middle ground. I can't just drink one glass of wine - if I drink one glass of wine, I'm buying drugs. My tendency to addiction is easeing the pain of what I live in."

Wiggins also talks with weekly bike riding,,,,, External About how the "Jiffy-Bag" scandal still affects him.

Two investigations by the UK Anti-Doping Agency (UKAD) and the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS) Selected Committee failed to prove what was the medical program in Wiggins’s medical program delivered to Sky’s then-doctor in the competition in 2011.

However, the Congressman’s report on the DCMS committee said that the Wiggins and Sky teams improved performance by using drugs allowed under anti-doping rules, rather than for medical reasons.

"I'd love to know one or another that actually happened," Wiggins told Bicycle Weekly.

"And I was asked 'What's in the package?' but I definitely don't know."

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