"It's not weak to put your hand up and ask for help... look where I ended" - Former U23 World champion opens up after drug abuse lead to his imprisonment

Jack Bobridge had a promising career ahead of himself when he was crowned the U23 time trial world champion in 2009, which got him a contract at WT team Garmin for the next season. In 2011, he even finished fifth at the Worlds TT in the elite category, but that result also marks the point Bobridge's career entered a downward spiral. He retired in 2016. And a year later, the Australian hit the rock-bottom and got arrested for drug dealing.

"It got to the point where my whole body... it was a struggle to even get out of bed," he says in an episode of the Youtube program A Current Áffair. "I couldn't put my socks on because my feet were so sore, let alone get up and train." Bobridge had already turned to alcohol and drugs throughout his career to forget his problems.

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"There was no competition anymore, so there was no barrier then. So it kind of opened the door. I didn’t matter. I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted," he reflects now. In 2017, he was arrested after being caught selling MDMA during an undercover operation, for which he was sentenced to prison in 2019. "I was doing a lot of drugs. And obviously I was getting drugs for my friends at the time, which, I guess, some people will say, yeah, it’s dealing, but there was never any profit to be made from it."

Now, for the first time since he was released in early 2022, he is still remorseful. "I can take it on myself, but it's hard to take it on for everyone who lets you down. My daughter too, she was still so young. She didn't know what was happening," said Bobridge, who would have liked more support from the world that gave him so much in the years before.

"I take full responsibility for the things I've done and the drinking and the recreational drug side of things, but I wish there was more support for athletes," the Aussie said. "You feel like you're giving 100% to your sport and to your country and then when you're done, you're just dropped. That's it. You're done. There were never any phone calls, there were never any emails. There was nothing after I retired. It was just gone. You just disappeared."

Bobridge now works as a bricklayer and hopes his story can help others. "I just hope my story can help one person not to do what I did. It's not weak to put your hand up and ask for help. I didn't, and look where I ended up."

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