'I'm on the front foot now' – Bradley Wiggins on road to recovery following bankruptcy

Bradley Wiggins has said that he's "on the front foot now" after turning his life around from declaring bankruptcy last year.

Speaking at 'An Evening with Bradley Wiggins' in Maidstone, Kent earlier this week, the former racer opened up about his financial troubles and battles with drug addiction since retiring from cycling in 2016.

Wiggins was declared bankrupt last year with £2 million worth of debt across several ventures and companies, including his former Continental racing squad, Team Wiggins.

During the event, held at the 350-capacity Hazlitt Theatre in Maidstone, Wiggins said that "the people who are responsible are paying a heavy price" for the deals which led him to financial ruin, according to The Telegraph.

"It's all resolved now. I'm on the front foot now," Wiggins said. "This was something that was done to me. Eight months on, it has all turned around. The people who are responsible are paying a heavy price for it. Fortunately, it's all good. My life's in a good place.

"I regret I never paid attention to my financial affairs when I was racing," he added. "It's one of the things that happens to athletes – you make a lot of money and, if you haven't got your eyes on it, people take advantage.

"I was getting ripped off left, right and centre by the people looking after me. Accountants as well."

During the event, which ran for two hours, 44-year-old Wiggins also recalled his childhood abuse at the hands of coach Stan Knight. Wiggins named Knight two years ago, though Knight died just as Wiggins was beginning his road career in 2003, and so wouldn't face any justice.

Wiggins said that ongoing trauma from the abuse would see him fall into drug addiction soon after retiring from racing.

"The contradiction is that the coach who abused me was my first male role model in cycling. I had grown up with an absent father, and so this man instilled a confidence in me as a bike rider," Wiggins said.

"Wherever he went, he would tell everyone: 'This kid's going to be special.' It kind of offset what was going on behind the scenes. There were other kids at the club it was happening to as well. We were normalised to the behaviour, made to feel there was nothing wrong with it. You're only 13, but it leads to a really dark period.

"Within three years of retiring in 2016, I was a drug addict. And a lot of it was to do with this recall of my childhood."

Wiggins also spoke about his relationship with Lance Armstrong. Late last year, the American offered to pay for Wiggins to go to therapy, an offer which he accepted.

He compared their upbringings – alongside that of Jan Ullrich, who Armstrong has also helped – and said, "On the human side, [Armstrong] has been very good to me" while acknowledging his controversial past.

"I've really got to know him over the past eight years, and he has been there for me in recent times," Wiggins said.

"He packed me off to this extensive therapy centre, paid for it all. He had a very similar upbringing to me – a fatherless upbringing. 'You can't will this stuff away,' he told me. 'You have to sort it out.' 

"On the human side, he has been very good for me. You always have to put this disclaimer in with Lance: It's not to condone what he did," Wiggins added. "Yeah, he took drugs and all that. That's a different part of it, very polarising.

'It's an open wound in cycling. But in terms of me being here, being alive, he has really helped. He has done the same for Jan Ullrich. The three of us grew up without a father."