Bradley Wiggins says ‘I finally feel liberated’ as he backs NSPCC push for abuse victims | Other | Sport

Bradley Wiggins is pictured

Bradley Wiggins is speaking out for victims of child sex abuse (Image: Getty/PA)

When Sir Bradley Wiggins finally hung up his lycra shorts in 2016, closing the door on a dazzling 20 years in professional cycling, he did so with palpable relief. The five-time Olympic gold champion had fulfilled his life’s ambition in 2012 by winning the Tour de France, becoming the first British rider in history to do so.

But the ecstasy of achieving his childhood dream was to be short-lived – as pressure grew for him to repeat his success, his efforts were curtailed by injury and he felt his ambition dissipate.

And yet there was something else: a growing realisation cycling wasn’t, perhaps, the great love of his life after all. In fact, as he came to realise, it had provided him with a drive to succeed and a form of escape after he was sexually abused by a coach between the ages of 13 and 16.

After Wiggins, 42, publicly revealed he was groomed in an interview last year, a shift began to occur within him.

Today, he strongly feels an emotion he never once thought possible. “I feel liberated,” he tells me. “Which is a lovely thing to feel.”

He is chatting to me over Zoom from a cafe in between occasional forkfuls of food. It’s mid afternoon and he’s been on the go since early morning. Dressed in a tan T-shirt, inked arms on display, he’s sporting a buzzcut and beard.

Long gone are the famous sideburns and mod haircut from his “rock star” era, a persona he now says was a front for the “introvert” hiding beneath his 6ft 3in frame.

The father-of-three has taken the brave step to talk more about his experience of grooming as he fronts a new NSPCC campaign to help people spot the signs of child abuse.

Cycling: 31st Rio 2016 Olympics / Track Cycling: Men's Team Pursuit Finals

Wiggins won a gold medal at four successive Olympic Games from 2004 to 2016 (Image: Getty)

“Listen Up, Speak Up” encourages adults to undertake a 10-minute online tutorial to help them understand when and how to sound the alarm if they believe a child is experiencing harm. It comes as the charity reports a 14 per cent increase in calls to its helpline by adults about sexual abuse concerns.

“If someone had told me after I stopped riding that within a few years time this is what you would be doing rather than game shows and TV, I wouldn’t have believed them,” Wiggins admits.

“It’s funny how things pan out and a lot of it is to do with where you’re at in your life. This is the most rewarding thing I’ve done because it’s such a humbling subject for me and for many people – and a tragedy as well.”

Has Wiggins had therapy to process the trauma he has experienced?

“No, I’m my own therapist, no-one knows what goes on inside my head,” he replies, only half-jokingly. “I’m not quite there yet – I’d be open to it, very much so.”

The exact details of what he experienced remain hazy because, like many victims of trauma, he “locked it out of his memory”.

Sir Bradley Wiggins is backing an NSPCC campaign to help adults spot child sexual abuse

Sir Bradley Wiggins is backing an NSPCC campaign to help adults spot child sexual abuse (Image: GETTY)

Some of his recollections remain deeply repressed in his mind. “It’s to do with recall,” he says. “It’s coming out slowly. I can’t even say how many times it happened to me. I can only remember parts of it.”

He was blindsided by the revelation last year by one of his ex-trainers, Sean Bannister, who told a newspaper Wiggins had “always had misgivings” about another trainer.

Until reading that, Wiggins says he had no clear memory of having ever asked an adult for help. “That was harder to take than coming out about it [the abuse],” he says. “That I had tried to tell someone. I didn’t know I had.”

The abuse started after he discovered cycling, aged 12. He had watched Chris Boardman win the individual gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics on TV and dared to dream he could do the same thing.

His father, absent throughout his childhood, was the six-day and seven-day racer Gary Wiggins, who tragically died of head injuries long suspected to be violently inflicted after leaving a party in his native Australia in 2008.

Bradley Wiggins of Great Britain riding for Sky Procycling descends the Col de Mente during stage seventeen of the 2012 Tour de France

Bradley Wiggins riding for Sky Procycling during stage seventeen of the 2012 Tour de France (Image: GETTY)

Wiggins grew up on a council estate in London where he became “normalised to violence”. He was raised by his mother and his stepfather, who he says was violent towards him, and stopped him from speaking up about his sexual abuse.

He trained at Herne Hill Velodrome in south London and competed in his first professional race aged 16. Pounding the bike for hours, expelling his energies, helped him to escape the reality of his troubles.

“Sadly, weirdly, it aided my sporting career because it made me an introverted person,” he says. “That’s good for cycling because you’ve got to live inside your head a lot. It was an underlying drive, not that I was conscious of it at the time.

“It’s only when I look back now that I realise that all my childhood through my teenage years contributed to me being quite an odd teenager – focused, driven and aspirational.

“Now whether I’d have been like that or not if I’d had the perfect upbringing, bearing in mind I was abandoned by my father as a baby… those things contribute to this sort of inner drive.”

He finally met his real father when he was 18. “I wished he had been around because he was quite a violent man and lot of violent parents are confrontational but weirdly when you’re a kid you want someone to stand up for you and I felt like I’d been bullied, that this had all happened because I didn’t have a dad in my life,” he says today.

“People saw a vulnerability there.”

Speaking frankly, Wiggins believes he wouldn’t have achieved the remarkable success he has enjoyed if he had enjoyed a happy, stable upbringing. Neither he would swap what happened, even if he could, he admits.

“I wouldn’t change a thing. What’s important if these things happen to you is what you do next. And as much of a legacy that I left in cycling, what I do now for the next 20 years is equally as important.

“It doesn’t just stop with inspiring people on the bike. It’s about authenticity. I think the best way of living my life is being true to myself – so yeah I wouldn’t change a thing… because I probably wouldn’t have been the father I am to my own children.”

Sir Bradley is a father to Ben, 17, and Bella, 16, by his former wife, Catherine, and Ava, two, by a new partner. He tells me he has been open with his two eldest children – Ben is a fledgling professional cyclist, who won gold at last summer’s European Track Championships in Portugal – about his experiences growing up.

While the threat of abuse against youngsters in sport will never go away, Bradley believes “things have changed, certainly in cycling” and Ben is safer than he was.

“There are more stringent procedures and safety measures in place,” he says.

These days, Wiggins channels his physical energy into boxing. Having shed the layers of his “rockstar persona”, he’s learning how to be social once again but more authentically this time. A huge music fan, particularly of Paul Weller and The Jam, he’s playing the guitar again and is in a band.

He hasn’t switched gears to campaigner mode full time.

“I can’t be a campaigner for forever because I’ve three kids to look after,” he laughs. But it’s good to see him becoming clearly more comfortable in his own skin.

He urges adults concerned about a vulnerable child to “speak to an authority figure” such as a teacher, community leader or police officer. And he wants to share an important message for any child suffering from sexual abuse or grooming.

“The thing I learned is that you may feel like the loneliest person in the world when this is happening, and that you’re the only one this has happened to, but you never will be alone,” he says. “We’re all out there, lots of people have been through it.”

● The NSPCC is the leading children’s charity fighting to end child abuse in the UK. If adults are worried about children they can get advice from NSPCC practitioners on 0808 800 5000 or via help@nspcc.org.uk