Wiggins had no plans to speak about what his cycling coach, Stan Knight, did to him on training camps as a teenager. But when Campbell asked, \u201cWhat else were you running from?\u201d when Wiggins walked away from the Tour de France after winning the race in 2012, Wiggins replied: \u201cA lot of stuff. I was groomed by a coach when I was younger \u2013 I was about 13 \u2013 and I never fully accepted that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campbell clearly wasn\u2019t prepared for the answer, saying: \u201cBlimey, we\u2019re getting it all today,\u201d and the interview soon meandered to discussion on Eurosport commentary and Wiggins\u2019 opinion of Boris Johnson. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t press me for detail, but it was like a weight had come off my shoulders the minute I did that,\u201d Wiggins told BBC Radio 4<\/a> on Tuesday. \u201cIt opened a wave of press articles, particularly from the Daily Mail, and in some of them the insinuation was I was lying \u2013 \u2018what a bizarre statement to make, without adding any context to it\u2019 \u2013 which I could probably see, there was some plausibility in that. But from that moment on, I felt like I had to see it through and make sense of it all.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t till about a year and a half on from that interview, I did another interview with The Sunday Times Magazine and that sparked other people to come forward who were also victims of this same gentleman, and that caused me to spiral even more because it was confirmation for me. I always thought I was the only one.\u201d<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n Wiggins because Britain\u2019s first Tour de France winner when he triumphed in 2012 (Getty)<\/p>\n Wiggins\u2019 laid bare the abusive practices of Knight, who gave invasive massages, touched his victims in the shower under the guise of teaching good hygiene, and shared beds with the boys while staying away in hostels. Wiggins\u2019 account encouraged four more men, all in their forties, to come forward and reveal similar experiences while under Knight\u2019s supervision.<\/p>\n Wiggins goes into more detail in his new book, The Chain, an account of how his troubled childhood dogged him throughout his career despite the outward success of Tour de France and Olympic glory. He writes about a hotel stay with Knight, who died in 2003, when Wiggins vomited during the night and woke up in the morning without his pyjamas. \u201cI know somehow, be it through the food or another way, he drugged me,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n Wiggins\u2019 book also details how he wrestled with the relationship with his father, Gary, a cyclist who left when Bradley was only 18 months old and did not make contact with his son for more than a decade. He recalls how his bullying stepfather cynically filled the void in his life. Wiggins tried to reconcile with his father in his twenties but discovered a man hooked on substance abuse, and he was later killed in 2008 after an assault. <\/p>\n![\"Wiggins](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/newFile-2.jpg\")
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