Sir Bradley Wiggins admits snorting cocaine off Olympic gold medal | Other | Sport

Sir Bradley Wiggins has confessed he doesn’t understand how he survived his drug addiction nightmare after snorting cocaine off his Olympic medal. The cycling legend, 45, was at the pinnacle of success in 2012, conquering London’s streets with gold in the men’s time trial – his fifth Olympic triumph – just weeks after becoming the first Briton to claim the Tour de France.

The future appeared limitless for Britain’s newest sporting icon, yet within 12 months he was absent from Team Sky’s Tour de France squad and six years later a cocaine dependency would destroy his marriage and nearly claim his life. In conversation with The Times, Wiggins confessed, when questioned how he survived: “I don’t know. I don’t like to think about it.”

The knight of the realm reveals those harrowing periods, including snorting cocaine off his gold medal, in his forthcoming memoir: “I raged as I smashed up my 2012 trophy for Sports Personality of the Year and my knighthood: ‘This isn’t success.'”

“I did that in front of my kids. No wonder there were times when they talked about trying to put me in rehab. The desecration of my Olympic medal might have happened away from their gaze but it’s equally sad to reflect on.

“Hundreds of thousands of people roaring me on, millions more watching at home.

“One of the great moments of London 2012, and there I am in a wardrobe, snorting cocaine [off my gold medal], mocking my achievement, hating it for what I believed it had brought me.

“It was the equivalent of p****** on someone’s grave, and in that moment I was p****** on my own. The gold medal, the Tour de France… All of it was dead to me. The person I’d been in Paris and London was dead to me too.”

Wiggins found support from an unlikely source: the disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong. Despite having his seven Tour titles stripped after confessing to doping, the American offered to fund therapy for Wiggins.

He revealed: “Lance, he’s helped me a lot in recent years – more so this year. We were talking about therapy, he wants to pay for me to go to this big place in Atlanta, where you go and stay for a week.

“He’s a good man. He did what he did, that’s not to condone what he did. He’s got a heart under there somewhere.”