"In one of my darkest periods I smashed all my trophies" - Bradley Wiggins opens up on past suicide fears

Bradley Wiggins has been one of the biggest names in British cycling for more around two decades now. Life in the public spotlight hasn't always been the easiest for the former Tour de France winner though, culminating in a scary moment his son Ben told Wiggins his fears of a potential suicide. 

"Two years ago I thought I was doing well but I failed to see that I was smoking and drinking and doing all sorts and I thought that was alright," explains the 2012 Maillot Jaune winner and multiple-time Olympic gold medallist on the High Performance Podcast, although thankfully, he now is genuinely doing much better. "I'm really on an upward journey now."

One of the problems Wiggins had, was trying to replicate the highs of his professional career post-retirement. "Win an Olympic gold, stand on the rostrum, certainly at Hampton Court having won the Tour de France ten days before that, and walking away from that rostrum as Olympic champion, and thinking 'What do I do now?' And having to deal with that,” he says. "Nothing was ever going to top that day from what it meant and the millions of people at the roadside that day, the boom that happened in cycling. You know, The Sun were giving out sideburns that day on the front of the newspapers."

The memories and reminders of that success became a target of the Brit then though during his down periods. "In one of my darkest periods I smashed all my trophies off the mantelpiece because like 'what are these things doing up here?' I threw my Sports Personality of the Year one out, my knighthood - the things that came with external validation that you were great, because I had a real issue with the things I'd achieved that that meant that I had a hierarchical position in the household as to what's deemed success," he recalls. "And I was trying to make the point in the worst possible way, off my head, that this means nothing, it's just junk. There were various events like that."

As mentioned though, after that moment of concern with son Ben (who is forging his own cycling career at Hagens Berman Jayco currently ed.), Wiggins has thankfully turned a positive corner. "I'm proud of the person I'm becoming. I feel like a good father to my children,” he concludes. "My dad left when I was one and a half. I met him when I was 19, he walked back into my life because I was successful. The famous quote he gave me which drove me for years, and breaks my heart to this day. He said after a week of meeting him when I was 19, 'Don't forget you'll never be as good as your old man was'. I think about this all the time still as part of my recovery."