Bradley Wiggins hints again at deeper truths behind Team Sky doping saga: “There was a lot going on behind the scenes and continues to this day”

Cycling
Thursday, 23 October 2025 at 10:09
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More than a decade on from his historic Tour de France victory, Sir Bradley Wiggins has again hinted that there is more to be revealed about the controversial Team Sky era that defined the Grand Tours during British cycling’s golden decade in the 2010s.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday, Wiggins suggested that “the truth will come out” regarding the infamous Jiffy-Bag scandal and the team’s widespread use of therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) during his time as leader. “I was put in a position where I had to prove a negative,” he said. “The story that ran after that was full of innuendo, supposition, and it grew. It was a sinister act, there was a lot going on behind the scenes and continues to this day. One thing I will say on that, I think the truth will come out at some point.”

Shadows of the Sky years

Wiggins’ new autobiography, The Chain, revisits both the glory and the turmoil of his professional career — from Tour and Olympic triumph to public scrutiny over his relationship with the now-INEOS Grenadiers, then-Team Sky.
The team, led by Sir Dave Brailsford, came under fire for its use of the corticosteroid triamcinolone, administered under TUEs in the seasons leading up to Wiggins’ 2012 Tour de France victory. A UK parliamentary inquiry later concluded that Sky had “crossed an ethical line” in their interpretation of medical exemptions, though no formal doping violation was ever proven.
In The Chain, Wiggins maintains his innocence but accuses the team of abandoning him when the scandal broke. “Team Sky chucked me under a bus,” he told The Times ahead of the book’s release. “There was something greater going on.” His comments to Radio 4 now extend that theme — implying there are still hidden details yet to surface.
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Wiggins became the first Brit to ever win the Tour de France in 2012

“I had to see it through”

The 45-year-old admits the fallout from those years compounded the personal trauma that had long defined his private life. “It opened a wave of press articles, particularly from the Daily Mail, and in some of them the insinuation was I was lying,” he told the BBC. “But from that moment on, I felt like I had to see it through and make sense of it all.”
While much of The Chain deals with Wiggins’ childhood abuse, family trauma and eventual descent into cocaine addiction, the cycling world has been drawn to his renewed willingness to address the darker corners of his sporting past. His suggestion that others within the Sky setup were shielded from scrutiny echoes remarks made last week, when he told The Times: “It’ll come out.”

From scandal to recovery

Since retiring in 2016, Wiggins has faced bankruptcy, addiction, and a long battle with his own public image — the flamboyant “Wiggo” persona masking what he now describes as years of pain and disconnection. “I’m responsible for my own life,” he said. “I should have taken more responsibility for my own care and not been dependent on anyone else.”
Now more than a year clean and living with a strict daily routine, he says writing The Chain was a form of accountability. “Why write it now? It was a chance, a year into being a better version of myself and cleaning my act up, to get all this down in my own words, my own story, in detail.”
For cycling fans, however, it is his continued teasing of deeper revelations around Team Sky — and his promise that “the truth will come out” — that ensures the story of Britain’s most successful road era remains as complex, contested, and compelling as ever.
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