These are facts that Bradley Wiggins says he "buried" until this interview.

But the 2012 Tour de France winner unearthed them in an interview with

Men's Health

magazine , excerpts of which were published on Tuesday.

The 41-year-old Englishman reveals that he was "manipulated by a coach when I was younger - I must have been around 13 - and I never completely accepted it".

A decade since he made cycling the coolest of all sports, Sir Bradley Wiggins is falling in love with the bike again – and finding himself in the process https://t.co/0GRpDUVodB

— Men's Health UK (@MensHealthUK) April 19, 2022


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Wiggins specifies that this implicated coach would have "manipulated" him for sexual purposes.

"It affected me as an adult," continued the triple Olympic champion, who explained his difficulty in revealing these facts by an unfavorable family context.

"My stepdad was pretty violent with me, he called me 'faggot' because I was wearing lycra or that sort of thing, so I really didn't think I would confide," he said.

“I was a weird teenager”

“I was so lonely…I just wanted to escape this environment.

I found myself so isolated.

I was a bit of a weird teenager in so many ways and I think my determination on a bike came from those hardships,” he added.

Retired since December 2016, Wiggins, 41, had previously spoken of his depressive tendencies and difficult childhood.

He said he tried for a long time to understand his relationship with his biological father, the Australian cyclist Gary Wiggins, who died in 2008, who abandoned his family when he was very young.

"The first time I saw him I was 18," he said.

“He was my hero.

I wanted to prove things to him.

He had been a good runner, but he could have been very good, it was a wasted talent.

He was alcoholic, manic-depressive, rather violent and he took a lot of amphetamines and drugs [to dope] at the time, ”continued the former cycling champion.

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  • Sport

  • Cycling

  • Bradley Wiggins

  • sexual assault

  • Sexual violence