Sir Bradley Wiggins has revealed that Lance Armstrong offered to pay for his therapy, an offer which he refused initially, but is now reconsidering.
The 2012 Tour de France winner, and five-time Olympic champion, has had a public battle with his mental health in recent years, but told The High Performance Podcast that he was in the “best place” he had been for his whole life currently.
Wiggins appeared on Armstrong’s podcast The Forward during the Tour de France and earlier this year, and expanded on the pair’s connection and friendship in the recent interview.
“Lance has helped me a lot in recent years, especially this year,” Wiggins explained. “Talking about therapy, he wants to pay for me to go to this big place in Atalanta where you stay for a week, they take your phone off you. Lance was going to fund that for me. He’s a good man.
“That’s not to condone what he did, we all know that, but it’s a bit disproportionate to what some people get away with…. He’s got a heart under there. He’s also got an ego the size of a house. It’s why he won seven Tours, well he didn’t.”
Armstrong was stripped of the seven Tours de France he won between 1999 and 2005 for doping offences.
“‘I don’t need help, but thanks for the offer’,” was Wiggins’ original response to Armstrong’s offer, he added. However, the 44-year-old said that he was changing his mind: “That was six months ago, but I’m considering speaking to him now. I wanted to get back to a semblance of order, without talking to someone… Now I know what I want to talk to them [a therapist] about. I didn’t just want to go in there and say ‘sort me out’.”
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“I’m in the best place I’ve been for 44 years of my life,” he explained. “That’s largely down to the fact I’ve been to the other side of the world, I’ve been in dark places at times, for various reasons. I’ve experienced extreme highs with my success, and other aspects of my life, but I’ve also experienced, like most of us, the other end of the spectrum… I [have] finally taken responsibility for my own life. I’m not in a position where I’m playing the blame game.
“There were some extreme moments, the last one was about a year ago without going into too much detail, but I was in a very dark place, a very dark room, for many days,” he continued. “It was a hotel. My son, actually, was the one who intervened and really made me realise the self destructive mode I was in, the damage I was doing to myself.
“I think where I’m at now… there always seemed to be something that was causing me issues. I’ve realised now that there’s never going to be a clear path. I was one of those people who wallowed in self-pity. I was one of those people who would drink etc and I’d be late for something and it would affect my behaviour.”
Wiggins also spoke about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.
“The biggest thing that has impacted me, the most amount of pain, was the fact I was sexually abused for three years by my first coach between the ages of 13 and 16,” he said. “When I started to accept that – I’d ignored it for 30 years – when I retired, I really resented cycling. I said a lot of times that I hated cycling. That was a real process for me.
“The interview I did with The Times meant four people came forward who were in the club at the same time, and that was a weight off my shoulders. There was an insinuation that I was lying about it, and that killed me.”
The alleged abuser was named as Stan Knight of the Archer Road club in West London by The Times.
On his financial difficulties, which saw him declared bankrupt early this year, Wiggins said he was “fleeced left, right and centre”.
“Money has never defined me or been my main priority,” he said. “I wish it had been at times. There were a lot of changes in tax laws and things, and I had professionals who were bending the books and stuff while I was still cycling. Up to 2012, they were exploiting my image and name…
“You get 10 years down the line and you realise you were a pawn in everyone’s game. There was a lot of professional negligence. It has been a learning curve.”
