Bradley Wiggins has said he has lost all interest in cycling and never watches the sport. He explained that when he was growing up, and during his pro career, cycling was a "religion" for him and he was obsessive about it, but he never enjoyed it.
He said he went about his career winning races to "tick boxes" ultimately to try and prove something to his father, who abandoned him when he was a child. Wiggins added when he first met his father - Australian rider Gary Wiggins - aged 19 years he goaded him. His father told the young Wiggins he would never be as good on the bike as he was.
Wiggins, who won the Tour de France, five Olympic titles and eight senior world titles, said the goading by his father had a profound impact on him and spurred him on for years as he tried to prove himself. But now that he had moved on from the sport, he could see now while cycling had been his obsession for years, he never loved, or even liked, being a pro rider.
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“Now I don’t pay any interest to cycling, I couldn’t care less,” Wiggins said. "I don’t watch cycling anymore and have no interest in it. It filled a massive void in my life with a view to be close to my dad. People say it’s a shame I’ve fallen out of love with cycling, but I was never in love with it. It was like a religion.”
“You don’t fall in love with a religion, you adopt a religion. Now I’ve left my faith. I can’t stand it. I hated cycling, really. The act of riding a bike was a means to facilitate what I wanted to do with my life.”
"I was obsessed with cycling. Because I threw myself into cycling, I became like a sponge. When I do cycling commentaries, they call me the Oracle because I know what shoe someone was wearing in 1996, what race they won - it was like a religion to me."
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Also said while his son, Ben, was a junior European champion on the track, he did not interfere with his cycling career.
"I never got involved in his cycling career because I just wanted to be his dad first and foremost. I didn't want to be the one who pushed him into cycling and coached him, getting him back from school and saying, now you need to do two hours on the bike," he said.
"He'll come to me now and ask 'Dad do you think I should train today?' and I'll say, 'how do you feel?' And I can have a proper father son conversation with him. I think he'll be better than I was as a cyclist."
Speaking on Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast, Wiggins also addressed being sexual groomed and abused by a cycling coach when he was a kit. He added he recalled more details - some of which stayed in his head - after he decided to speak out as part of an NSPCC campaign encouraging people to identify and call out abuse in cycling.
“This happened over a three-year period," he said of the abuse at the hands of a local cycling coach and which began when he was aged 12 years. "I can’t remember how many times it happened. We’re talking about incidents from very minor to borderline rape, sexual abuse, whatever term you want to use.”
"In recalling this stuff to add weight to the interviews and trying to really beef it up, I found I was recalling a lot of the incidents in my head over and over again - particularly this guy's face. It really hit me hard. I have to be careful how much I do to help people at the expense of myself."
