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Bradley Wiggins reveals heinous sexual abuse by 13-year-old cycling coach

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Sir Bradley Wiggins, who won five Olympic gold medals and the Tour de France during his cycling career, has spoken about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child

Sir Bradley Wiggins talks about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child(Photo by Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union)

Five-time Olympic gold medalist and Tour de France winner Sir Bradley Wiggins has bravely spoken out about being sexually abused by his cycling coach at the age of 13.

Wiggins claims he was sexually abused for three years by the now deceased elderly coach. On the podcast “Under the Surface,” Wiggins said, “The thing that has had the biggest impact on my life and what I’ve come to terms with is that I was sexually abused by my first coach at the age of 13.”



“I met my first coach when I was 12. I watched the Barcelona Olympics on TV. Chris Boardman won on the Lotus bike. I watched it and that was the day I started cycling. My mother made me watch it. I was inspired by it and just thought that’s what I’d like to do. 12 years later I won that competition with Chris Boardman on the track in Athens. My first Olympic gold medal.”

After the 1992 Olympics, Wiggins joined his father’s former cycling club, where he also met the coach. “I was introduced to a guy that night who was the coach of the club, so I joined the club that same night – nobody asked if I wanted to – they said, ‘This guy is the coach, he’ll look after you,'” he explained.

“He was a 72-year-old former military policeman and he felt my pulse. He had this speciality of feeling children’s pulses. He said he had never felt a pulse rate as strong as mine before. I realise now that it was all manipulation, but he said I was going to be the best cyclist this country has ever produced.

“And I believed him. He always told that to everyone, no matter where we went. The contradiction is that he was the one who made me fall in love with myself, but he also sexually abused me for three years between the ages of 13 and 16. And because of what he said, he got away with it.

“Because I didn’t have a father, because I was at this club where he was the coach, and because I was following in my father’s footsteps and everything was about ‘Wiggo’s Boy’, I felt like I could never tell anyone. It’s a very strange thing. It really got to me.”

Wiggins celebrates his fifth Olympic gold medal((Getty Images)

Wiggins also alleged that the coach abused several other boys, adding: “This is insidious. One other incident is the only one I’m talking about because there are so many. I’ve had 36 incidents. But the other one, the smaller one, started there and escalated very quickly.”

“He had us both get in the shower and showed us how to clean our testicles because that’s a pretty important area when cycling as it can cause infections and saddle sores. He told us that as a professional cyclist you have to look closely but he held our testicles and showed us the special cleaning method.

“There were a lot of incidents. I woke up naked and didn’t go to bed in my pajamas. I woke up naked but didn’t remember waking up in the night and taking my pajamas off. But, you know, there were a lot of… It’s very, very, very fucked up.”

Wiggins also won the Tour de France during his cycling career((Getty Images)

Wiggins has since met with other abuse victims, which he found very positive. “For the first time in my life, someone really validated me,” he said. “From my perspective, that’s something I can now share with someone like me because having another person’s validation keeps me further along the path.”

“I think I was on drugs with that guy. I know we were on drugs. I wish I had never started cycling because I would have never met that guy. But now I would never change anything, it has made me the person I am today and I am happy to be who I am today.”

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