January hasn’t typically been an easy month for Cath Wiggins. Two years ago, it was when her divorce from Olympic cycling champion Sir Bradley Wiggins – her husband of 16 years – was finalized.
By January of last year, the two had stopped speaking to each other due to a significant breakdown in their relationship.
Cath says they hadn’t even texted each other for a year and a half before Christmas. Things were made worse by Bradley’s financial troubles – he’d gone bankrupt in June 2024, forcing him to sell their family farmhouse in Lancashire.
I remember meeting Cath right after everything came out – it was awful! Apparently, Bradley was in such a state, just bouncing around, staying on people’s couches. She actually told me he was even thinking about selling his trophies, can you believe it? It broke my heart, and she quietly confessed she often had no idea where he was even sleeping each night. It was just… devastating to hear.
Their divorce was difficult, but in a heartfelt interview, she publicly supported her ex-husband, asking people to have sympathy for him as he was going through a tough time. This was before his controversial autobiography came out, and she deliberately didn’t reveal everything.
In his memoir, The Chain, published a year later, he openly shared his deeply personal battles with drug addiction, revealing he used drugs from 2018 until achieving sobriety in 2024. He also bravely detailed the abuse he experienced as a child at the hands of his cycling coach.
Perhaps the most shocking detail he revealed was his admission of all-night cocaine use – once even while using one of his gold medals – followed by taking their children, Ben, 20, and Bella, 19, to school the next morning.
In her first interview about the events, Cath now says she wasn’t aware of how bad things truly were. However, one particularly difficult incident, described in the book, required her to take a central part.
After being apart for almost four years, Cath saved Bradley’s life in 2023. He’d had a dangerous drug overdose in a London hotel and remembered calling his son, Ben, for help. Both Ben and Cath traveled to London and, as Bradley described it, held an impromptu intervention.
‘Between them, they helped me get back on my feet,’ he wrote. ‘They gave me a reason to live.’
Today, she’s sharing for the first time how she immediately stopped what she was doing when Ben told her that friends had called, concerned about his father.
She explains that at that moment, the issue wasn’t about blame or even the possibility of divorce. Her only concern was his well-being.
She rushed to London by train, deeply worried about her husband. When she arrived at his hotel room, she found it messy and filled with drugs, including many vials in a bag.
She said softly that the place was filled with a lot of stuff. It was a scary situation – he could have been seriously hurt, but thankfully, he was okay.
Bradley was awake, but clearly unwell. ‘Even though I’d seen a lot, it was incredibly difficult to witness,’ she recalls.
I immediately realized things were incredibly serious – that if he didn’t change his behavior, the situation would end tragically,” she said, her voice trembling. “I warned him that we desperately needed help, or something terrible was going to happen.
She assisted him in getting sober, but then realized she needed to get back to her teenage children.
I was completely conflicted. He was staying at a hotel in London, and my children were back home in Lancashire. I felt I needed to return and take care of the kids, but then I went back to London first thing the next morning. I left him a note while he was sleeping, hoping he would make the right decision.
Yet while she ‘pushed very hard’ for rehab while she was with him, Bradley refused.
I extended my stay to help him get settled. I found him a temporary place to live in London and even arranged gym classes and meal deliveries to help him establish a routine. Before leaving, I asked him to commit to getting his life back on track.
She believes her help, along with Ben and Bella’s visit shortly after, saved his life.
She believes that helping him was the most important thing she ever did. While he was still struggling with addiction at the time, she felt he finally started to see a glimmer of hope.
Bradley didn’t get fully sober until mid-2024, after going to rehab. The program was funded by Lance Armstrong, a cyclist Bradley considered a friend, even though Armstrong had been stripped of his Tour de France wins for using performance-enhancing drugs.
Considering all the difficulties she’s faced, you might think she’d have harsh things to say about her former husband. However, she actually feels quite the opposite.
Cath says she believes they have both made peace with their past.
‘I honestly wish him nothing but the best, and I think he feels the same towards me,’ she says.
Christmas Day was really special – we all got to spend some time together as a family. It was wonderful to see Bradley doing so well; he’s sober, relaxed, and seems much happier. It honestly felt like we were reconnecting as a family, which is more than we’d hoped for.
She adds: ‘After so much turmoil, I think this really is a new chapter.’
It’s certainly a surprising turn of events. Just a few months ago, most people wouldn’t have expected this, considering the positive media attention Bradley Wiggins – known as ‘Sir Wiggo’ after being knighted in 2013 – had been receiving.
He’s considered one of the nation’s top athletes, having won the Tour de France, five Olympic gold medals, and eight World Championships. However, his career has been marked by controversy. His 2016 retirement from professional cycling was tainted by a scandal involving a package delivered to him in France in 2011. Although he strongly denied any wrongdoing, questions persisted, even after an investigation in 2017 couldn’t prove the package contained a banned substance.
By 2018, Bradley had developed a serious cocaine habit. In May 2020, after leaving his family, he publicly announced his separation from Cath on social media, without even discussing it with her first.
Months later, it emerged he had fathered a daughter, Ava, with PR Laura Hartshorne.
She admits the situation could have been managed more effectively, but she’s not one to criticize. While it was a difficult and emotional period for her, she understood the circumstances he’d faced and maintained that he’s always been a good person at heart.
In a 2022 interview with Alastair Campbell, Bradley bravely shared that he was abused by his cycling coach when he was 13 years old. He explained that the experience was so deeply suppressed, he had previously denied it ever happened.
In the summer of 2024, reports surfaced that he had declared bankruptcy. It was also suggested that the national hero, previously believed to have a fortune of around £13 million, was thinking about selling his awards and trophies to get money.
It is little wonder, then, that Cath’s eyes fill with tears as she talks about recent events.
‘He’s been through an awful lot,’ she says. ‘We both have.’
As Bradley Wiggins explained in his 2012 autobiography, My Time, his wife Cath was his anchor – the one person who understood the man behind the confident, flamboyant image he projected to the public. This image, complete with sideburns, tattoos, and a rock-and-roll attitude, was something he later admitted wasn’t entirely genuine, but Cath always knew the truth.
Having once been a cyclist herself, and later working as a radiographer, she put her career on hold to focus on her husband, Bradley, and their children. She’d known him as a friend since 1997, and as their friendship blossomed into romance in 2002, she began to notice subtle complexities in his personality.
Just a few months into their relationship, in 2003, Bradley and his partner visited his mother, Linda. During the visit, Linda gave Bradley a letter from British Cycling detailing accusations against his previous coach, Stan Knight.
Honestly, it broke my heart hearing Bradley talk about this. He said when his mom actually asked if anything like what happened to the other person had ever happened to him, he just… lied. He denied it! Cath, who was there, said the whole car ride home he was completely silent. Just… quiet. It’s awful knowing he kept it bottled up, even from his own mother. I can’t even imagine how much pain he must have been in.
I felt like we should pause dealing with this issue for the time being, but not ignore it completely or pretend it doesn’t exist long-term.
She recalls placing the letter on the telephone table when they arrived home and then telling him he was welcome to discuss it if he chose to.
Bradley didn’t share what he’d experienced with his wife until after he retired – it was the first time he’d ever truly opened up to anyone about it.
Cath does not want to go into detail about those conversations, but her expression says enough.
She explains that guilt lies solely with the person who caused harm, but it often takes victims a significant amount of time to truly accept that.
The trauma ran so deep Cath arranged counselling for them both but believes it wasn’t enough.
The doping scandal was a constant stream of problems for him, and he never got a chance to truly come to terms with everything that happened.
Cath was also facing her own difficulties. She received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in 2015, following years of mental health issues, including a week-long hospital stay. She says she’s currently doing well, with periods of ups and downs. Around the same time, Bradley’s struggles with substance use, which he says started in 2018, were mostly hidden from public view.
“I feel silly that I didn’t realize it sooner,” Cath says. “He traveled a lot, and even when he was home, he wasn’t acting like himself, but I couldn’t figure out why. I just assumed he was having a hard time adjusting to retirement and dealing with things from his past.”
The easygoing, cheerful man Cath had married was now replaced by someone anxious and quick to anger, which put a lot of stress on their relationship. Like many families dealing with addiction, Bradley refused to admit he had a problem when Cath expressed her worries. Real change only started happening when he was ready to get better himself, and that began in 2023 when he called his son, Ben, and asked for help.
Yet Cath’s rescue mission did not initially mark a new chapter for the now divorced couple.
‘Communication just stopped between us, and I’m not really sure why,’ Cath says.
Bradley also started becoming less reliable in his contact with Ben and Bella. ‘He skipped a few birthdays, which was really out of character for him,’ they said.
There was no contact even when, last summer, Cath was rushed to hospital with sepsis.
Honestly, when everything went down, it wasn’t about my feelings at all. My focus was entirely on the kids. They’re not little anymore, of course, but they still really needed their father in their lives, and that was what mattered most to me.
Bradley has been working hard to recover, and his journey isn’t over yet. He shared in November that he was going to a specialized trauma clinic in the United States, with financial support from Lance Armstrong.
Cath does not know what the treatment involved. ‘That’s his story to tell,’ she says.
This seems to have been a key moment. After leaving the clinic, Ben and Bella visited their father in Miami, and they were the ones who invited him to spend Christmas Day with the family at their home.
Cath described their afternoon together as lovely. He brought lots of gifts for the children, who excitedly opened them while she prepared dinner. Although he didn’t stay to eat with them, she made sure he had a few snacks before he left, and she smiled as she remembered it.
She’s very proud of her two children. Her son, Ben, is a successful professional cyclist, just like his father, and is turning 21 soon. Her daughter, Bella, is 19 and taking a gap year after finishing school. Both Ben and Bella still live at home, although Ben spends a lot of time competing in Europe.
However, things are changing for Cath: her family home has been sold, and she’s moving to a smaller place in the seaside town of Lytham. This move will put her closer to her job as a self-employed physiotherapist.
‘It’s been hard, but I’ve made my peace with it,’ she says.
Several things contributed to the financial difficulties. It wasn’t solely Bradley’s responsibility. Issues with taxes played a part, and it’s often true that money comes and goes quickly – there are always people eager to help you spend it.
She firmly believes Bradley never cheated using drugs. “I’m absolutely certain he didn’t,” she states. “Those claims really hurt him because they questioned who he was as a person and as a cyclist.”
She also tells me she is yet to read his autobiography.
She says a friend warned her that she might struggle with this, since she used to care so much about the person involved.
Oh my gosh, she’s finally going to address everything, and I just know Bradley’s words about how hard the last ten years have been on her are going to really get to her. I can just feel it – it’s going to be so emotional! It’s like he gets it, and I think that’s what she needs to hear right now.
Honestly, it breaks my heart to read that. He says Cath… she suffered just as much as anyone else over the last twelve years. And the worst part? He thinks she paid the price for being with me. It’s like he’s saying my life ruined hers, and it just… it destroys me to think about it. She deserved so much better.
Cath is more understanding. ‘I believe everyone involved suffered a lot,’ she explains. ‘It’s really heartbreaking that his incredibly successful career has largely been overlooked – even by himself.’
‘And more than anything, I hope he can find pride in that again, because he deserves it.’
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2026-01-28 04:29